


technical difficulties

by therentyoupay



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (but really), F/M, Nino Lahiffe swears --- i feel this in my soul, Prompt Fic, Slice of Life, Trapped In Elevator, Tumblr Prompt, gratuitous angsty pining, gratuitous friendship fic, gratuitous superhero slice of life, p.s. brotp!Tikki/Nino, spoiler alert: he ALWAYS carries snacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 84,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therentyoupay/pseuds/therentyoupay
Summary: “Man,” Nino groans, accepting defeat at last, as he gives the golden elevator doors a vicious, vengeful kick. Just like that, he remembers his present company.Nino turns chagrined eyes to Ladybug.“Er. Sorry… Probably shouldn’t take it out on the doors?”Ladybug doesn’t seem to hear him. She is staring hard at the security camera located in the corner. He’s never seen her so quiet… not that he’s seen much of her, that is. Definitely not this close.Damn, he can’t help but think.What Adrien wouldn’t give to be here right now.“I’m sure they’ll fix it soon,” Nino offers tentatively, because it seems like something Adrien might say. Or Ladybug, probably, if she weren’t so distracted.“They will,” she acknowledges, but her eyes are still pretty far away. “That’s what I’m worried about.”“What?“Ladybug straightens. She makes a decision; it does really pretty things to her eyes, so Nino doesn’t hear her at first, when she asks him for his hat.— In which Ladybug gets trapped in an elevator with... Nino. { LoveSquare, brotp!MariNino, all-around-friendship!fic }Prompt:Trapped in an Elevator.





	1. a few fairy-sparkles of light and magic dust and other fancy-weird shit —

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roarlikethunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roarlikethunder/gifts).



> **to rina:** hi, this is ten months late, i love you ♡  
>  **also, to rina:** as per usual, your simple ficlet/drabble prompt spawned into another goddamn multi-chapter fic, i hope you're happy. at leas this time, the fic is under 300k words and will be completed in a matter of three manageable chapters---which are already 95% finished, you JERK. ♥♥♥
> 
> first installment originally posted [here](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com/post/156538815577/also-where-is-this-trapped-in-an-elevator-fic) on my tumblr. 
> 
> (second installment should be up soon → will be posted to ao3 only!) ♡

 

 

* * *

_technical difficulties —  
_

* * *

 

 

“Man,” Nino groans, accepting defeat at last, as he gives the golden elevator doors a vicious, vengeful kick. Just like that, he remembers his present company.

Nino turns chagrined eyes to Ladybug.

“Er. Sorry… Probably shouldn’t take it out on the doors?”

Ladybug doesn’t seem to hear him. She is staring hard at the security camera located in the corner. He’s never seen her so quiet… not that he’s seen much of her, that is. Definitely not this close.

 _Damn_ , he can’t help but think. _What Adrien wouldn’t give to be here right now._

Nino actually feels a little guilty about this, especially now that the actual akuma-danger has passed and he’s not—you know, too busy fearing for his life. Now that the only danger is just… technical difficulties.

“I’m sure they’ll fix it soon,” Nino offers tentatively, because it seems like something Adrien might say. Or Ladybug, probably, if she weren’t so distracted.

“They will,” she acknowledges, but her eyes are still pretty far away. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

“What?“

Ladybug straightens. She makes a decision; it does really pretty things to her eyes, so Nino doesn’t hear her at first, when she asks him for his hat.

“Please, Nino,” she says seriously, quietly, barely audible. “I know this is strange, but something is about to happen. If luck is on our side and I am granted the time needed, then I am going to need to get that security camera out of the way, or the point is moot.”

“Moot?” Nino echoes, wide-eyed, taking off his hat—his own mask, in a way—and handing it over. Her smile makes him feel very warm.

And then he’s watching in confusion as she carefully covers the lens with the shield of his hat, and secures it there, nice and tight.

“Let’s just hope they don’t have any other secret cameras hidden in here,” she says, and though her voice is playful, her sigh gives her away. Nino wants desperately to help, but doesn’t know how.

“Moot?” he echoes, with a commiseration he doesn’t understand, but _feels_ , man, he feels it.

Ladybug turns another smile on him. It’s grateful, and tired, and maybe a little apologetic. “Moot,” she says.

To his surprise, Ladybug sits on the floor. He stares agape as she beckons him down.

“Might as well get comfortable,” she says, with all the cheer she can muster despite the unavoidable despair hanging about her. “We are going to be stuck. There’s nothing we can do but wait, and give this a try, and just hope that… well. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Give what a try?”

As Nino sits down next to Ladybug—not nearly as gracefully—he’s close enough to see all the worry on her face but far enough away that he is not undeservedly encroaching _too_ much in her superhero-superwoman-magical girl personal space, or whatever magic she is. Then he notices that her earrings are flashing quite insistently.

“Ladybug!” Nino gasps, and leans forward to get a closer look at the panicked way her earrings have just lost their only remaining spots. Belatedly realizes that their knees have brushed up against one another. “Er. Sorry—”

“It’s okay, Nino,” she says, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her hands are tight fists on her thighs. “Its fine.”

“Ladybug, what's—?”

“Just don’t say my name out loud,” she whispers, like she’s begging, as her skin takes on an unnatural glow, “Just in case… okay?”

And then a few fairy-sparkles of light and magic dust and other fancy-weird shit he doesn’t get creates a halo around her crown, her face, her shoulders, down to her ankles, and Nino is left staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, _oh my god_.

She tries to offer him— _him!_ —a comforting smile, but it’s not quite strong enough yet to pick up the corners at both ends. Nino gapes.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any snacks,” she asks quietly, barely a thread of hope, completely acknowledging without acknowledging the giant elephant in the elevator, the one that is suspiciously shaped like Marinette. “Would you?”

“Cookies would be wonderful!” chirps a voice that _oh dear god, what is THAT._

“Nino… meet Tikki. Tikki, you know Nino.”

Nino is at a loss for words. Instead, he slowly, silently reaches into back pocket for the bag of potato chips he’d stored there, after breakfast, for later, which are no doubt crushed into oblivion after, well, being kidnapped by an akuma.

Tikki, or whatever she is, gasps and flies forward, dives headlong into the chip bag. Nino startles so violently he nearly drops them, but then his gaze snaps up to Marinette’s, who is giggling uncontrollably, and then laughing, and then through the laughter comes little shudders and hiccuping jerks and silent tears and oh, oh god no, Alya— _Alya!_ —is never going to forgive him if—

“I’m sorry,” she hiccups in the same moment that he reaches forward, and before he knows it he has her forehead resting on his shoulder, and one of his arms is wrapped around hers, and there is a small creature eating potato chip crumbs in his lap.

“Dude,” Nino whispers, voice stressfully hard to locate. ( _This… this makes sense?_ he thinks.) ( _Alya will not forgive me too easy for keeping this secret_ , he thinks.) And Adrien won’t _admit_ that he’ll be bothered by what’s happened today, but… 

Nino doesn’t say any of this.

Instead he sighs, confused and a little sad, and whispers, “No wonder you’re so tired all the time.”

Marinette’s bright spark of surprised laughter, half a sob, shoots straight down his spine. It sounds delirious and relieved and miserable, but at the same time, to his ultimate surprise—so, so grateful. Nino’s whole being responds to it, to the way he feels needed and appreciated and useful, like he can be the kind of friend he’s always wanted to be, and tried so hard to be, always.

And Nino would like to hope that, maybe, for once, things could work out without some supernatural magic pushing it along.

 

//

 

The second the elevator doors open, there is a mob.

Everyone wants to speak with Ladybug, standing tall and powerful in her red dotted suit, her smile even more impossibly brilliant than ever, and the young civilian man that had the _privilege_ to be trapped in the broken elevator with her, for an _hour_ —

“Whoah!” Nino squawks, as he is forcefully escorted outside by the Gorilla, while journalists and reporters try to converge around the space where Ladybug has just exited, where he is already bidding adieu, and meanwhile Adrien watches it all on the television monitor in his limo, breathing deeply and slowly and _calmly_ —

Because Ladybug had been down to her last spot when she and Chat stupidly parted ways at the penthouse, and he should _never_ have left her, but he was moments away from losing his mask, and he trusted that Ladybug would be able to get Nino to safety and out of there _in time_. And Nino was already regaining consciousness, anyway, so it should have been _a piece of cake_ —that’s what they said!—but by the time word of the broken elevator reached him, he was already outside and _Adrien_ ; the hotel entrance was even more blocked off than during the time of the attack; any move on his part or _Chat’s_ part would only mean heightened risk of exposure for _her_ , for him—which left Adrien calling Nathalie’s cell phone in a fit of urgency, and all the while Nino was up there, trapped in a box with the girl under the Miraculous mask, because Ladybug had been down to _her last spot—_

Adrien’s hands are shaking, he notices. He grips the leather seat beneath him, breathing deeply, _calmly_ —

The door is wrenched open, and a ruffled Nino is heaped onto the seat beside Adrien. It slams shut behind him, and a moment later the Gorilla slips behind the driver’s seat, next to Nathalie, and drives off.

It unanimously and wordlessly agreed that his father will never learn of how the Gorrilla had agreed to leave him unprotected, even for a moment.

“Dude,” Nino looks up at him, glasses askew, and Adrien can’t help but grin, despite everything. “Dude, are you _rescuing_ me?”

Adrien’s smile slips, but only a little. Light, but a poor attempt at humor: ”Pretty sure Ladybug already did that, Nino.“

Nino huffs, but averts his gaze, crawls his way up to a seated position. Adrien watches. Nino rights his glasses and scoffs, ”I think I might risk another akuma rather than deal with those vultures. Is that what you put up with all the time, man? Damn.”

“Are you okay?”

“Okay?” Nino echoes, pausing as he cleans his glasses. His hand reaches up to swipe along the rim of his hat. “I mean, yeah. Abducted by akuma is marginally better than _being_ akumatized, right? And then getting escorted by Ladybug back to safety was pretty—I mean. Yeah. Uh. Sorry, man.”

Adrien’s head tilts. “Why?”

“I just—I totally know you dig her.”

Oh, jeez. Adrien casts a panicked glance to the distant front seats, where Nathalie and the Gorilla are silently staring straight ahead on the other side of the divider, impervious as ever. Who is more uncomfortable: Nino or Adrien? Is it possible to measure? Adrien’s cheeks are warm, and Nino, somehow, is still talking. “—like, _granted_ : being trapped in an elevator isn’t awesome, but—ya know. Ladybug is pretty cool.”

Adrien stares at him. “Yeah,” Nino winces. “Sorry, man. I don’t mean to rub it in.”

Adrien clears his throat. He glances at the Gorilla, who he can see quite clearly, because they never put up the privacy barrier. Adrien considers it briefly, but perishes the thought. He wouldn’t do that.

“What are you apologizing for?” Adrien says, and means it. “You were kidnapped! I’m just glad you’re all right.”

A sigh leaves Nino in a huge rush, and he sags down the seat. “Yeah, man. Thanks. It was… it was something.”

Adrien clears his throat. Again. Knows he is probably being too obvious. “So… how… Nino, what happened?”

Nino turns his head, glances briefly at the Gorilla. Back to Adrien. “In the elevator, you mean?”

_Where else?_

“Yeah,” Adrien’s mouth is dry. Offering up phony excuses for why he was late to class? _Piece of cake_. Outright lying to his best friend? Adrien can taste cotton. “It’s just… we gotta come up with some stuff to say so that when the reporters eventually get to you, you don’t have to worry about coming up with stuff on the spot, you know. That’s always the hardest.“

Nino grins. “Guess I forget sometimes how often you actually have to deal with this.”

Adrien shrugs, only slightly worried about how easy this fib actually turned out to be. “It helps to be prepared.”

But Nino just chuckles, and rubs his fingers together, like there is something between them. “I’ll say,” he says quietly, though mostly to himself.

Adrien hesitates, watchful. “So… do you know how you want to respond? Did—did Ladybug say anything?” His heartbeat quickens. “Any tips?”

“We actually talked about it too, believe it or not,” Nino reveals, and his smiles seems like he’s laughing about it, like it’s an amusing memory, and Adrien’s stomach floods hot. “All things considered, she’s even more prepared than you are.”

“Unsurprising,” he deadpans.

“What?”

“So what did you talk about, then?”

Nino considers. “Well, as far as the media preparation went, I am just going to stick to the simple truths. Ladybug and I couldn’t fix the elevator ourselves, so we had to wait. We passed the time by talking, like, about random stuff, and mostly about our akuma experiences. I felt creeped out by the security camera, so Ladybug to use my hat to cover it up, and she did. I shared my chips with her. The elevator started working again. That’s pretty much it.”

Adrien stares at Nino, astounded. He swallows hard. “Okay, that’s… good. They aren’t going to be satisfied, but they never are, I guess. Still it will give them enough to feed off of, for now.”

 _Security camera_ , Adrien thinks. It was covered. _Of course she did._

“That’s what she said too,” and Nino’s voice turns extremely thoughtful. “She’s also worried how this might affect me as a possible target… if Hawkmoth thinks that I might have any information about the Miraculous just because Ladybug and I talked about random crap for an hour. Messed up, right?”

Adrien’s voice is rather faint. “Right.”

“She doesn’t think we’ll have to worry too much though. She’ll keep an eye out, and I’ll be careful, but… I mean, I’ve already been akumatized once and I’ve been a pretty positive guy since then. Probably won’t happen again, right?”

Adrien blinks. He hadn’t even considered that.

“Well, even if I were, it’s not like Hawkmoth would be any closer to what he wanted, ya know? He’s already tried me once, and I don’t have anything more helpful than I did a few months ago. Unless, like, Hawkmoth wants to know what Ladybug’s favorite color is.”

Nino looks at Adrien. Adrien does not allow himself to ask what Ladybug’s favorite color is. He does not allow himself to ask _anything_ more. Nino shakes his head, and it might be Adrien’s imagination, but he thinks Nino might be smirking.

“You’re totally about to burst open, man,” Nino sighs, which turns into a laugh. “Go ahead. Ask me stuff.”

Adrien’s eyes widen. _Adrien. No. You can’t._

“I know you’re dying to,” Nino laughs. “Just do it.”

“Okay…” Adrien hesitates. _What’s she like? What does she want to talk about when there aren’t any akuma to purify? What kinds of jokes does she like? What music does she listen to? What_ is _her favorite color? When her spots ran out—did she let you see her face?_

“Did anything surprise you?” Adrien asks, innocently enough, watching Nino like a hawk, looking for the slightest twitch or… anything.

“It surprised me how easy she was to talk to,” Nino answers, after a beat. He hesitates, tilting his head, like he is playing back his words and testing how they sound. “Yeah, that was unexpected. Once you start, it’s really easy to keep going. Guess the elevator also didn’t leave us much choice, ha. Next?”

Adrien stares, astounded. Nino is so calm, so unaffected. Everything is just as normal.

Adrien’s had not expected Nino to be…  this good at keeping secrets. Nino is loyal, but Nino is _loud_. Adrien swallows; he is as proud and relieved and grateful as he is annoyed.

“So, then… did she talk about anyone we know?“

Nino blinks. "Like Chat?” he supplies.

Adrien blinks back. Damn, he hadn’t even—he’d been so focused on— _of_ course _you should ask him what she thought of Chat Noir!_

_Play it cool, Agreste!_

“Her partner?” he confirms, as if he weren’t _sure_ , as if he didn’t _know_ , and he really hates the way his voice raises so high at the end but _come on_ , “I mean… I was actually wondering about people from school and the city, but I guess that would be one of the first things to come up, wouldn’t it?” he concludes, as casually as possible. His heart pounds. "How did they meet? Did she say? What is it like to be on a team with him?”

“She said that she likes working with him,” says Nino. “And that she hopes they’ll find Hawkmoth sooner rather than later.”

Adrien deadpans. “Nino…” he scolds, miffed. “You just totally fed me one of your vulture-lines.”

“Dude, I’m sorry!” Nino looks genuinely abashed all of a sudden. “I just—dude, I know you like her, so what good is it gonna help if I sit here and say that I’m not supposed to say anything about what she said about anyone!”

Adrien’s leans forward, barely breathing—with Nathalie and the Gorilla only four feet away, oh, who _cares?_

“So she _did_ say something about him!” he breathes, and the grin that curls into his mouth _feels_ like Chat, feels clever and confident and wry. "What did she say!”

Nino eyes him. “Dude… I thought you had a crush on her,” he says, oddly intent, but before Adrien can ponder such a gaze Nino says, “Why would you be stoked about her talking about how much she _digs_ -digs her partner?”

Adrien can’t believe what he’s hearing. His heart is soaring. His head is airy. “Can’t I support a positive partnership?” Adrien demands, but his heart isn’t in it, because it’s too busy flying over the moon. “I might have a soft spot for Ladybug—”

“Soft, eh?”

“—but there’s little chance a superhero is gonna be able to pick up a civilian—a civil—a civilian _anything_ , let alone a… a civilian boyfriend, all right?” It sounds much dumber out loud, but he’s on a roll, he can’t stop now. “ _I_ shouldn’t be getting my hopes up, but Chat—you see? Everyone else supports the superhero duo so why can’t I? I’ll just, you know. Support from… afar?“

"You sure are moony,” Nino muses, with fondness. “But I wouldn’t be so sure about that, ‘afar’ part, man,” he smirks, crossing his arms. “There aren’t many in Paris who don’t know who you are… and she’s _met_ you before. I was there, remember?”

Adrien gawks at him. “Nino… are you telling me that you… talked to Ladybug about me?”

Nino can’t contain his laughter. “Dude! Are we or aren’t we best bros! Give me some credit!”

 _What did you say!_ he wants to demand.

But the Gorilla pulls up to Nino’s family’s flat, and Nino practically flees all the way into his apartment complex before Adrien can even whip out his cell phone fast enough to badger him over text. Even after Adrien pulls away and heads back to the mansion, his insides are eternally screaming.

Nino is annoyingly… steadfast.

 

//

 

The next day at school goes just about how Adrien thought it would.

As nice as it is to have all the attention diverted from him, for once, it’s unfortunate to see Nino bear the brunt of it. Adrien arrives to the school entrance and steps from the limo with a gasp, because Nino is surrounded. He seems to be fending them off pretty well, especially for his first time, but Adrien still marches up the steps anyway, ready to accomplish rescue mission number two.

“Nino! Come on, we’ve got a project to do!” calls a voice from the top of the steps. Adrien falters as he looks up, and sees Marinette hurrying down with a determined slant to her brow, at once both impatient and commanding, every inch the class president. Alya follows closely behind, smirking.

The reporters fumble as she grips Nino’s unsuspecting arm, and she quips, “You all can finish your questioning after school, but for the next seven hours he is a student, and a contributor for a group English project, and his assistance is required inside. Come on, Nino!”

Alya lingers behind to give a formal, quick statement on behalf of the study body, its class president, and the celebrity student of the hour in question, then turns on her heel and marches off to where Marinette and Nino are about to disappear within the school building. Adrien blinks.

When he wanders up the staircase, the reporters don’t even notice him. He should be extremely relieved.

Adrien frowns, and goes to school.

 

//

 

The mob inside the classroom looks much different than the one outside the hotel or school, but Adrien recognizes the curious crowd of classmates for what they are: vultures, indeed.

Nino has only barely sat down by the time he starts to look truly overwhelmed by the onslaught of questioning. Throwing aside whatever strange feelings had crept up on him outside, Adrien grips the strap of his bag and climbs up to his usual seat, which is currently occupied by Kim, and says what he should have said to the camera-people as soon as he’d pulled up in the limo.

“You guys, give Nino some space. He’s clearly already been interrogated by the crew outside, and he already had a bad enough day yesterday with getting kidnapped, so how is bothering him inside the classroom gonna do anyone any good? Just leave him alone and please leave my seat.”

Kim stands, but not quietly:

“Oh please, Adrien—just because Nino probably already blabbed everything to you the second he got out of the elevator doesn’t mean that you need to spoil it for the rest of us! The dude was locked with Ladybug in an elevator! For an _hour!_ Don’t think we haven’t guessed who provided the chatty getaway car, man.”

Nino and Marinette and Alya gasp with stricken looks on their faces, then Nino grows angry.

"Dude, will you _cut it out?_ ” he snaps, and there’s an edge to it that Adrien thinks he recognizes, but hasn’t heard so clearly before. It reminds him of purple glows and darkened eyes, but Nino is only flushed in the cheeks. “There’s nothing to tell! You are all blowing this way out of proportion! Stop being so greedy and taking out your own bored A.F. lame B.S. on people who are trying to stick by me when the rest of Paris is going nuts over nothing! It’s not cool, man!”

The teacher walks in, effectively bringing the climax of the argument to a screeching halt, and class returns to class. When it’s safe to do so, Adrien and Nino fist-bump under the desk, and the day moves on. Things go back to normal.

Mostly.

(Because Adrien had known from the beginning that he could trust Nino, but… to see Nino stick to Ladybug’s protection… with such…

Resolve?)

Adrien glances at Nino from the corner of his eye, as Nino stares determinedly straight ahead. It makes Adrien wonder if maybe he’d accidentally underestimated Nino without realizing it. (‘ _If’_ becomes ‘ _how much’?_ ) It makes him wonder what other knowledge Nino could be… trusted with.

Nino stiffens suddenly, slightly, and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. Very cautiously, Nino turns back to glance behind him. Adrien catches Nino throwing a quick grin at the seats behind him. _Ah_ , Adrien thinks, and laughs to himself. Are he and Alya dating yet? They’re taking forever. _She probably doesn’t like that Nino got so much quality time with the major star of her blog,_ Adrien thinks, dropping his chin into his hand with an amused grin. The voice inside his head always sounds much more like Chat, but especially so now: _I think I know the feeling,_ he acknowledges, and forces the hold on his grin.

It’s halfway through the lesson that Adrien realizes the glance hadn’t been directed at Alya, but to directly behind him.

To Marinette.

 

//

 

“Do you still have a crush on Marinette?”

Nino stumbles so badly on their walk down the empty hallway that he trips and slams into a locker.

“Whoah, man, I’m sorry!” Adrien quickly apologizes. “It’s just—for the last month or two I was so sure you liked Alya, and that you only liked Marinette as a friend, but then I saw the way you looked at her today, and I just wondered—”

“Looked at her?” Nino righted himself, aghast. “Like how?”

“I—I don’t know,” Adrien feels silly now. “Like you appreciate her.”

“I do appreciate her! I totally appreciate her! We should _all_ appreciate her! Marinette is GREAT.”

“Um. Yes… right.” Adrien starts walking again, slowly, so Nino can follow suit, because he still looks dazed and confused. “Marinette is great, sure. Sorry if I misread anything… I just. I don’t know. Got this feeling.”

Nino perks. “A feeling? Towards Marinette?”

“No, no, I meant—never mind,” Adrien chuckles. “Anyway. Where do you wanna work on the project today after school? Nathalie texted three approved locations, but one of them is the school library, and I know how you feel about that.”

Nino runs a hand over the rim of his hat, and it occurs to Adrien that he’s done that twice today already. Has he always done that, and he’s just never noticed before? “How does Papa Agreste feel about bakeries?”

“Probably finds them a lot less distasteful than being called Papa Agreste,” Adrien dryly replies.

“Well, what Papa Agreste doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

Adrien thinks of asking the Gorilla to sneak into a hotel lobby and retrieve his best friend, leaving Adrien in the car with Nathalie and no professional bodyguard. Hates that he actually feels guilty about that.

“I can totally lay off the nickname if it bothers you, too?”

Adrien starts. “What? Oh, no, Nino, it’s fine. Just lost track for a minute. Sorry, you were saying something about bakeries?”

Nino grins. “I was specifically asking about the Dupain-Cheng bakery. Marinette told me this morning I could swing by and grab a complimentary pastry for my near-death experience from yesterday.”

“Nino,” his voice is flat. “You were hardly near death.”

“Well, I have been bestowed a gift and I don’t wanna turn it down. So whaddaya say?”

“But where would we work on the project?”

“In Marinette’s kitchen, duh. Alya and Marinette are working on theirs today too!”

Adrien blinks. “Couldn’t that be cheating?”

“No way! They have a totally different topic than we do. We aren’t even studying together—just snacking together!”

Adrien cocks a brow. “Why did you bother to ask if you all already had this planned out?”

“Uh…”

Adrien slants his brow. “Is it Alya? Is she trying to find more time to spend together?”

“Well, I am not joking about the free pastry, you know—”

Adrien laughs, interrupting him. “Nino, its fine. I have been to the Dupain-Chengs residence before, so it should be approved, no problem.”

Nino perks up again. “You have?”

Adrien looks at him funny. “Yeah. For the video game contest, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Nino ponders.

Adrien considers the thoughtful look on Nino’s face. He’s about to mention it when the tell-tale feel of little paws patting at his hip let him know that Plagg is losing his obnoxiously minimal patience and that Adrien is going to have to sneak away to stuff a piece clandestinely into his bag. Ugh.

“Okay, so—that sounds good, we can just walk over after school. I’ll text the Gorilla. Would you mind telling Marinette? Even if she already knows, I guess. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Oh, dude, you have no idea—”

“Ahh,” Adrien points, for the poking has gained claws, “gotta run!”

Adrien stares balefully down at the little rascal eating his stinky Camembert in the boys’ locker room. In between licks to his claws, Plagg doles out unsolicited advice.

“You can’t ask him about Ladybug.” Lick. “If Hawkmoth suspects that the hat-wearing kid knows who Ladybug is, he will be kidnapped again, at the very least, and held hostage, perhaps by being akumatized a second time.”

Adrien blinks down at him. “You can do that?”

Lick. “It has been done before, in years past. Just perhaps not for such awful reasons.”

Adrien doesn’t like what he’s hearing. “But what if what he _does_ know _is_ dangerous? Shouldn’t I know too—as Chat—so I can help protect him too? As Chat?”

Lick, lick. “That depends.”

Adrien sighs, long-suffering. “On what?”

“On whether you truly trust Ladybug to protect him, as Ladybug.” Lick, lick, lick. “And as whoever else she is, under the mask.”

Adrien frowns. “Of course I do. It’s just—we’re a team! We should be figuring out this mess together!”

Plagg stares up at Adrien blankly. “You are also Nino’s best friend. You are also enamored with Ladybug. Your reasons for wanting to pursue Ladybug’s secret identity despite her wishes are your own.”

“But now a civilian knows, too!” Adrien hisses, barley a whisper. He glances around, making absolutely sure they are still alone. “What if she’s changed her mind? What if _this_ has changed her mind?”

“This places Adrien in a fine pickle: if Adrien is suspected of knowing too much, what will happen to Chat?”

Adrien pales. “You’re telling me to mind my own business.”

Plagg sighs, put out. “I am telling Adrien to remember that his business influences the business of Chat Noir, and vice versa. And that he shouldn’t confuse one for the other, just because he is foolishly enamored.”

“Foolishly?”

“If it were dignified, would they really call it ‘puppy love’? I think not.”

 

//

 

For the record, they never make it to the bakery.

“Shit!” Nino’s hands fly to his temples, almost toppling his hat. “Of _course_ Hawkface attacks _now!_ Why _this_ afternoon?! Now what are we gonna do!”

“ _Nino_ ,” she hisses gently, glaring back at him from over her shoulder, one of her hands still clutched gently at the corner of stone wall that obscures them from the school’s entrance steps. “Half the school just flooded with weird akumatized cleaning bubbles and you’re upset that your scheme is _delayed_? You realize you were actually going to have to genuinely _study_ in my kitchen, right?”

“It’s a legit scheme!” Nino insists, ignoring her lamentable truth, as loud cackling echoes out through the streets. The bank is next—the windows explode with suds. “Don’t deny it.”

“Be that as it may,” Marinette is hardly listening to him, which is totally fine, which is _completely_ and wildly fine, holy moly, because she’s watching the akuma off in the distance like she’s gonna go _fight it_ , because _holy cannoli_ — “Unfortunately, it’s going to have to wait.”

Nino sighs, a touch exaggerated. “Goodbye, free danish. Ez. Goodbye, free danish _es_.”

“ _Don’t worry, Nino!_ ” comes a tiny voice from deep inside Marinette’s satchel pocket, and Nino still jumps even though he should really know better by now. “ _Marinette’s dad always saves us a few chocolate ones for the end of the day, no matter what!_ ”

He hadn’t actually cared about not getting his pro-bono pastry, but this is _great_ news. “You guys,” Marinette hisses. “Focus! I have to get out of here. Everyone is running every which way—how do I get somewhere safe without running into anyone?”

Nino snaps, with flourish. “Let me walk you! If we run into anyone, I can stall them while you pretend to make a run for home.”

Marinette is clearly unused to having a Buddy for Operation(s): Run and Lie and Hide and Magical Shit; Nino could totally get into this.

She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be a 100% fan of sharing ‘The Burden’ just yet, but that’s okay, because Nino is pretty good at persuading people for stuff, and he’s got a feeling that she could really get used to this, too, and with the rate of Hawkmoth’s shenanigans, they are going to have plenty of time to practice their roadshow and _maybe I should create some set scripts?_ He wouldn’t be able to store them in writing, of course, but like she said yesterday, in the elevator, _it helps to know the story beforehand—_

“Fine,” Marinette hisses, gaze scattering, and then she grabs his arm to drag him forward, because she’d started off and he hadn’t been quick enough to follow on his own. “Let’s go!”

For the record, they don’t make it very far.

 

//

 

When Chat Noir bursts out of the remaining doors at the school’s entrance, he does not expect to see Nino, who told him ten minutes ago that he was going to get a soda.

He definitely does not expect to see Marinette either, whom Alya had told him had gone home to the bakery right away, to help set up their studying camp, and _no, don’t worry, just head over with Nino whenever he comes back, I’ll meet you guys there, don’t eat all the croissants without—_

“Princess,” Chat says, because he’d stopped running when he’d spotted them, _foolishly_ , and he’s been staring long enough to merit a word. His gaze drops again to where her hand is clutching at Nino’s long sleeve. “Nino,” he tilts his gaze up, grinning. Marinette’s eyes light up with understanding of _his_ understanding, but before she can let out a sound of protest, Chat salutes, and grins, and “ _Do_ carry on,” and takes off.

“ _Chat!_ ” Marinette calls after him, and the annoyed fluster he hears in her shout as the rooftops carry him only splits his grin wider. “ _It’s not funny!_ ”

But oh, oh, oh, how it _is_.

“You sly dog,” Chat laughs beneath his breath, swinging with the support of his staff. The akuma is nearly in sight, which means that Ladybug should be dropping in any minute. He takes a final few seconds to appreciate the intricacy of what Nino has done: not only had Nino allegedly chatted with Ladybug about _Chat_ … but it looks like managed to get some romantic advice of his own, too.

 

//

 

An eruption of bubbles bursts out from the swimming pool atop Chloe’s father’s hotel, and Chat feels himself gearing up for an enjoyable, hair-raising, claw-tearing kind of fight. _A little too much excitement today_ , he admits, though it seems like the Lying Bug has stuck, even in his own head: _Don’t kid yourself, Agreste—you know what you’re excited about_.

Does it make Adrien a bad friend, to feel so relieved that his suspicions about Nino’s feelings for Marinette are being proved true?

No. But the relief that Nino’s feelings aren’t for Ladybug—well. That might.

But for right now, that’s okay. Right now, he is _Chat_ , and Ladybug is on her way, and a fresh akuma is terrorizing the streets, and then—and _then_ —

Chat will find out more of what happened in that elevator yesterday, from Ladybug, even if Adrien never figures out what to do with it. Even if he never figures out _who_.

And then, after that and that and that: _Nino_.

Chat Noir chuckles into the wind as he reaches the hotel’s rooftop. Nino had invited him to ask questions, hadn’t he?

_Oh, he had, indeed._

Granted, when he’d made that offer to Adrien in the limo, Nino probably hadn’t meant that he should ask about _Marinette_ , but at this point an invitation is an invitation is an invitation.

“ _Oh, shit_ ,” says Chat Noir, when he remembers where Adrien is supposed to be headed at the moment, and at whose house he’s supposed to be eating delicious pastries, and in whose company—and who exactly he left behind on the steps at school, interestingly enough— _at least Nino is enjoying some extra time with Marinette_ — _and not Ladybug—_

And then the world erupts in a clash of bubbles, and elevators are (mostly) the furthest thing from his mind.

//

 

 **part [** ⅓ **]**


	2. for the danishes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _2/25/17_. here is part two! hoping to have part three finished within the next week or so! for those of you who don't know (and for those of you might enjoy a reminder), i recently uprooted my life and moved to japan! adventuring, learning a new language, starting a new job, and MORE ADVENTURING takes up quite a bit of time, so updates are spontaneous and inconsistent, but inevitable. just be patient, please! :)♡
> 
> this nonsense was beta'd by the ever-wonderful **ABIGAIL** , who puts up with my shenanigans and betas my fanfiction even while simultaneously icing her injured fingers in a bag of frozen onions. or so i hear.
> 
> thanks for all the love! ♡

 

 

//

 

For the record: Ladybug is four minutes behind schedule. The fight does not exactly go… swimmingly.

“Hello, Cat,” she grins down at him, bright and beautiful, with the brow of her mask in such a familiar, mesmerizing curve. He’s immensely pleased to see her, but also— “I thought you didn’t like to swim?”

He tries to strike back, with something charming and witty, but it’s clearly not in the cards: all he can do is spit out bubbles.

She winces in sympathy and oh, please dear god, will this humiliation ever _end_.

“Bubbles got your tongue, huh?” she quirks, but it's half-an-apology, because then she turns from him to face The Sudster. Consequently, she totally misses his attempts to inform her that there are at _least_ two other puns that could be a thousand percent more appropriate than that one. He is still debating between the two, and still completely incapable of speech, when The Sudster begins his monologue:

Nothing is ever clean enough, blah blah blah, so many grateful kids not caring for their litter and, oh.

Wow.

That’s terrible.

No wonder this guy was akumatized.

Chat Noir uses the dramatic moment to chew down the last wretched batch of bubbles and gasps in a greedy gulp of fresh air, and— “ _The akuma is in his brush!_ ”

It’s the quick work of fifteen minutes after that, between her breaking him free of his bubble-bonds, a few eye rolls and quick grins—all par for the course; quite possibly the highlight of his day—and one Lucky Charm in the shape of a bright red sponge later, Chat and Ladybug are free to…debrief.

He plans to coax it out of her in the next thirty seconds, which is usually about how long he has on a weekday afternoon attack before she flees off to wherever it is she goes, and he’s quite proud of his straightforwardness in this case: he plans to jump straight to the point by pointing out the ingenuousness of using the _teenager’s hat_ to cover the elevator’s security camera while she was—

“Come with me,” she grabs him by the arm (and for a split second he doesn’t recognize where the weird almost-deja vu comes from, but then he _does_ ) and when Ladybug looks back to make sure he is tagging along, he’s pushing down the smirk that had slipped onto his face at the memory of Nino with Marinette. “We don’t have much time.”

They’re already racing over rooftops, and Chat Noir is alternating between working hard to keep pace and sending her stilted glances. “We’re not headed to anywhere with an elevator, are we?”

His lady glares daggers, and Chat winces. He shrugs, “Too soon?”

Ladybug rolls her eyes. “Come on, cat. I actually have somewhere to be right now.”

Chat Noir stumbles over a shingle, tries to brush it off as nothing. “You do?”

At her spark of laughter, his stomach twists. “No, silly. But I am not joking about my earrings—we have to hurry.”

When they arrive back at his high school, Chat Noir is surprised. They’re not inside the grounds, of course,but they’re in a closed-off alleyway near enough to the campus that Chat is actually a little concerned that maybe he’s not being as sneaky about his true identity as he should be.

“This school?” he asks, and points the claw of his thumb towards the building where Adrien spends most of his days. Then something clicks. “Oh. Isn’t this where the Sudster was akumatized in the first place? You wanna know what set him off?”

“What? Oh, yes, he was triggered here by the students—which is _another_ story, and will be fixed, soon, I’m sure—but that’s not why we’re here.”

Chat blinks. “So… _is_ there a reason we’re here?”

“I want to talk to you,” Ladybug sighs, then casts a curious glance down the alleyway where they’re hiding. “I didn’t want to be overheard by any reporters who might have been waiting for an interview after the purification, and this is far enough on the opposite side of the city.”

“Oh,” says Chat, suddenly nervous. “Okay. What about?”

Ladybug sucks in her cheek.

“Yesterday was… actually really scary,” is what she says, not looking at him, and it takes Chat a full second and a half to realize what she’s talking about. It’s less than half that before he realizes he’s got her wrapped up in his arms.

“I thought you’d try to escape,” he says, but his voice is suddenly shaky, so it comes out quiet. It’s further muffled by her hair, he realizes, and the whole thing feels like a little bit of a miracle, especially when her chin finds his collarbone, her cheek rests against his neck, his jaw. He’s lightheaded with it.

She never returns his hugs.

Not like this.

“I knew I wouldn’t have enough time,” he hears, and it’s so _close_ , her voice, her _mouth_ — “I was lucky.”

A shock of breath escapes him, and he tightens his hold. He feels his head shaking, nudging against her hair. “Is this how angry you feel when I make puns? Because I—I don’t think I can handle this kind of play on words from you, my Lady.” _Not about this_.

He feels her pulling away, too soon. She steps back, and his arms fall to his sides, heavy. “I mean it. I’m not supposed to be lucky forever… the Charm is limited, you know? This was… this was real luck. I’m not sure what I could have done, if it hadn’t been Nino trapped in there with me.”

Chat Noir forces himself not to react. Ladybug is in her own space again, but he could still reach out and touch her, if he tried. “The hat-kid?” he asks.

“The _hat-_ kid?” Ladybug is aghast, and he doesn’t blame her. “You remember his name,” she admonishes, and he’s surprised to see how much she seems to really mean it. “He’s the one who turned into the Bubbler.”

“Ah. Yeah. Right. I knew that.”

“But yes,” Ladybug’s smile slants differently. “I guess you might have a point… his hat is very much a part of who he is at this point, isn’t it?”

Chat slips one shoulder forward. “If you say so,” he tilts his head, lets a genuine smile take up the space on his lips, tries to ignore the ache that’s still burning in his chest. _She’d been so close._ Clears his throat. “So. Nino, is it?”

“Yes,” she answers, and starts to roll her shoulders back, which is a signal more than any other that she’s gearing up to leave him. “Yes,” she says again, thinking out loud. “He’s… a good friend.”

 _Yeah,_ thinks Adrien. _He is_.

 

//

  
“See you later, Kitty.”

  
//

 

  
“I think Adrien is noticing that I’m acting weird.”

Marinette looks up from her book. Tikki is resting on her shoulder, from where she lies stomach-down on her bed, with just one finger holding her spot on the page in front of her. Nino twists back and forth in her computer chair, just so. He almost broke the backrest yesterday by pushing on it too hard, so he’s been strictly forbidden from sitting on it backwards, like he’d prefer. She seems to be waiting for him to answer, but Nino’s not really sure how to proceed.

Maybe he should have said that he’s noticed that _Adrien_ has been acting weird.

“How so?” Marinette prompts, when he’s been out of it for too long.

He sinks deeper into the chair, and folds his fingers over his stomach. His thumb taps against his hoodie. “Well, like… for example. He said something to me the other day about my hat.”

“Your… hat?”

“Yeah. He said that I’d been touching it more.”

Marinette blinks at him. Lists her head. “Have you?”

“I don’t know? I guess so? I must have been, if he’s noticed, right? But also, like—I’ve always messed with it when I was nervous, or when I am amping myself up to go do something tough.”

“Really? Like when?”

Nino hesitates. _Like when I was trying to ask you on a date to the zoo_.

“I dunno,” he says. “Lots of different times.”

Marinette places her bookmark inside the crease and closes it. Props her chin in one hand. “Huh,” she says, and narrows her eyes at him. He calls it her Thinking Face. Or the Nino, What Are You Talking About? Face. It depends on the hour, really.

“Yeah…” he shrugs. Damn, this really seems like such flimsy evidence out loud, doesn’t it?

“Are you worried that he’s catching on?”

“Adrien? Oh, no—no way. There’s no way he could have realized. I mean, now that I _know,_  it seems obvious, right, but I had no idea _before_ about who you were. Like—now, you _clearly_ look like her. But before the Elevator Incident, I never would have guessed?”

A sudden breath of laughter escapes her. “Have I told you that even my own parents didn’t recognize me as Ladybug?”

“On TV, you mean?”

“Well, yeah,” she acknowledges. “But even when Chat Noir and I came into the bakery—they didn’t know who I was.”

“Whoah,” Nino laughs. “Damn.”

“Yeah, I know,” she laughs back, which trails off into thoughtful silence. “Hmm,” Marinette taps her finger to her lips. “It must be the magic at work again… Like how Alya couldn’t pull it off when she was akumatized?”

“Yeah,” Nino grins. “That, or you’re just super freakishly lucky—magic, or no.”

“Oh, _hush_ , Nino,” and then she chucks a pillow at him.

Marinette, as he is learning, is _strong._

“Ow! Hey! Watch it!”

“I'm not even in the suit!”

“Apparently you don't need to be! Easy on the glasses and the hat, we've all been through a lot together, yeah? Also, wait, when did you actually have to talk to your parents as Ladybug?”

“A few times, actually?” If she notices that he has taken her pillow hostage, she doesn’t seem to mind; he ends up using it as a chin rest, since he’s so forcefully forbidden from using the back of the chair for the same purpose, come on, Marinette, it was _one time_ and they found the chair’s screw like, within ten minutes of him breaking it, it was _fine—_ “I especially remember when we had to protect Kim from Animan,” she is saying, “because that was the first time I ever did, and at first I was sure Mama knew who I was, right away.”

“Animan… _wait_ ,” Nino lifts his head, sits up straighter. “You’re Ladybug.”

“Um.” Marinette blinks. “Yes? I thought… we’ve already… covered this…”

“Ohmygod.”

“Oh my god, _what?_ ”

Nino stands up so fast the pillow falls the floor. Marinette exclaims in indignation until, “It was _you_ who stuck Alya and I into that cage!” His stance spreads wide, and he points. “On purpose!!”

Marinette’s eyes widen. She leans back, like that will somehow give her more time to think of what to say, but she can’t move very far, anyway, so she just stretches awkwardly on the bed---and Nino loses it. He’s dying. Nino falls back into the chair with such mortified delight that it's a wonder he doesn't break it all over again.

“Wait!” her hands fly up. Tikki giggles into her neck, and Marinette is ticklish, so she flinches and shoots up into a sitting position. She’s still trying to defend herself. “We all already talked about this! You had said you liked her, so I agreed to set up a date!”

“I had told _you!_ ” Nino is laughing, holy _cow_. “I had told _Marinette_ , dammit!”

“Yeah, okay, technically, but—“

“Oh my god,” Nino covers his face with his hands, and the laughter is real, how did his life turn into this? “Did you do that on purpose? As Ladybug, so Marinette would be able wiggle out of it?”

“No, that’s not---okay,” Marinette’s face turns red, because Nino has not stopped laughing. “Okay, fine! I didn’t plan it, but it just sort of happened that way!”

“Dude, how did I not put this together before now? I just—I haven’t even _thought_ about all the times that I saw Ladybug—Marinette, you _sneak_!”

“Nino!”

“Hold on, does Alya know? Wait. What the hell. What the hell am I saying— _of course she doesn’t know!_ Oh my god, this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me! I can’t wait for the day she finally finds out just how _much_ shit you’ve—“

“ _Ni-No!”_

A minute or so later, when the laughter has subsided, the air shifts; a persistent thought has been weighing on his mind for days. It's quite insistent now.

Marinette has resolved to ignore his outbursts in favor of returning to her book—or pretending to, anyway—Nino debates on whether or not to speak.

“Hey,” says Nino, and hopes it sounds light enough. “Actually, now that I’m really thinking about it… do you remember how when we were outside your bakery, after you purified the Animan’s akuma…?”

Her book snaps shut. (So wow, she really wasn’t actually reading it anyway—?)

“You mean,” her eyes are narrowed, but he knows she’s not _really_ mad, not really: “When I apologized to Alya for agreeing on her behalf to organize a date with you—“

“—apologized for _Marinette_ , because she doesn’t even know about what _Ladybug_ did—“

“—and then when you revealed that the zoo date had originally been set up as a date for _me_ , Marinette, which was then _irrelevant_ on all accounts, especially because you and Alya realized your feelings for one another—“

“Hey!! We haven’t made that officially public news yet!”

“—yeah, and then _you_ let slip that Alya had blabbed to you about my particular crush on a particular classmate.”

That…. He hadn’t been expecting her to bring up the subject in question, herself.

Nino rubs the back of his head. His fingers catch under the edge of his snapback, making it tilt. When he has the guts to look back up at her face, he can see all the way from across the room that she’s stiffened up. It’s a little jarring.

The last time he’d seen her so tense was three days ago, trapped inside an elevator.

“What is it?” she demands, and Nino forces himself not to chicken out and drop his gaze. Marinette has always been more than a little intimidating; knowing that she’s Ladybug hasn’t changed that. And yet…

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out yesterday,” is what Nino starts with. “I know it was supposed to be a big study party, the four of us, but after the akuma, and Papa Agreste summoning Adrien back home, we didn’t really do anything to reschedule. You were so hyped for it.”

“Nino... you don’t have to feel guilty because _Hawkmoth_ interrupted your big matchmaking scheme,” Marinette practically admonishes him, and she’s partially teasing him, but she’s also being serious—thinking that _this_ is the reason for his disappointment. Logistics.

So the real reason why he’s bringing this up makes it all the worse. Nino opens his mouth, but he hasn’t quite found the words yet, so his jaw just hangs open.

“There’s more?”

He clicks it shut. Nino drops his gaze, because he’s a Lame-o, and it catches on Tikki, instead. She’s looking him with the same vulnerable determination that Marinette’s face is only hinting it, only—full-force—and that’s when Nino finally decides what to do about the problem that’s been plaguing him ever since he saw Ladybug’s mask disappear in a flash of goddamn sparkles.

“Listen,” he takes a deep breath. “About Adrien…”

Now that it’s out there on the table, Nino prepares for the long haul: he’s ready to answer questions, and explain as careful as he can (bro-code be damned, this is _unusual_ , dammit, and Adrien may be his best, but Marinette is his friend, too) and he’s ready to face the consequences of what he’s about to share with her.

But in the space of the few seconds in which Nino prepares himself to explain, Marinette seems to have already figured it out herself.

“He doesn’t think of me that way,” she says, and her sigh takes her otherwise steady voice and makes it soft, makes it _sad_.  "At all."

Nino feels like a dick.

"Whoah. Hold on—"

“I mean, I already know he doesn't really know me very well," she reasons. "It's not like I've been able to talk to him for more than a simple sentence at a time since the day we met.”

“Look, I know you guys had a less-than-stellar start, and you don't really talk much for as much you guys see each other—which, y’know, is basically everyday—which is why we were trying to hook y'all up with the pastry party, but that's the thing—I've been thinking about it since I got stuck with you in the elevator—even in the four minutes we were stuck _before_ I knew who you were, and. The thing about Ladybug is. No. The thing about _Adrien_ is… Marinette, what I am trying to say is—”

“Adrien doesn't think of me that way,” says Marinette, toneless. “And you’re not sure that’ll change.”

Oh—oh jeez. Oh damn. This is not—

_Panic._

“It’s not that he doesn’t like you, or that he doesn’t think about you as a good person!” Nino tries to argue, tries to soften it, but his voice is always too, too loud. “It’s just—and damn, I don’t even really know if I should be saying this, but I don’t—would he mind? I don’t know. I just have this feeling like I should _say_ something? This is too confusing, man, too many identities and too much confusion and so many secrets—“

“Nino, either say it, or don’t.”

“Marinette,” he inhales sharply, “the reason why Adrien has been too distracted to think about liking anybody—including you—is because Adrien is already pretty desperately in love with Ladybug.”

She sits back, expressionless. He doesn’t like the look on her face: he’d expected it to fall, maybe, or look surprised or disappointed. He didn’t expect it to be… blank?

“So you’re saying… Adrien is in love with Ladybug?” She bites the inside of her cheek. Tikki pops back into view, a concerned tilt to her antennae. “So… he likes me.” Her brows furrow. Tikki pets her cheek. “But... he doesn’t like who I actually am.”

“But you’re _both!_ ” he says, which sounds stupid, but he has to wonder if maybe she actually needs reminding, and, “He doesn’t _know_ Ladybug is Marinette!”

“But he knows both of them. And he prefers Ladybug,” she insists. "Right?"

There’s an unexpected quirk to her lips, like she’s telling a joke, but her gaze hits him like a punch to the stomach; Nino blinks at her self-deprecation. This is not like Marinette at _all_ —self-deprecation is supposed to be his thing!

“ _Oh, Marinette…_ ” says Tikki, and Nino does not like this at all, man, this is so _frustrating._

“Look—I am only saying this because now that I know what I know, I feel like it would be really stupid and selfish of me not to share it with you, because this secret identity thing is _really hard_ , and you already go through so much shit, and I _know_ how much you like him, and I know how much energy you put into caring about him—“

“That isn’t a _bad_ thing—“

“No! It’s not! I’m not—I’m just trying to tell you that—look. This is what I am trying to say: Adrien is a super loyal guy. He fell for Ladybug first, so, it’s like—he can’t even see anyone else, you know? It’s not that he _prefers_ —it’s just, you know—Ladybug is, like. His everything.”

Marinette’s cheeks have gone pink, but she doesn’t look any more cheered up. Nino flounders.

“So—so I'm not saying it's not possible, because it _is,_ okay, it totally is, and we can still make it happen. But just. Right now? Maybe not... _right_ now.”

God, he gives the worst pep-talks ever.

“Aghh. Goddammit," Nino covers his face, tries to pretend he isn't being lame and cowardly. Heaves a sigh and drops his hands and rushes out, "I'm sorry.”

Marinette seems to have reached a conclusion. Nino recognizes it fairly well—it looks a lot like the way she did when she decided that she was going to open herself up to him in the elevator—mostly because she had no choice, but _also_ —and more importantly, she had accepted what was happening, had chosen to face it with optimism, because that's who Marinette _is_ , because that's just how the world decided to turn that day, and there wasn't anything she could do to change it.

Nino recognizes the feel in the air of Marinette being deep in thought; he's not so sure the outcome this time is quite the same.

He reaches for something else to say. Anything.

“You know,” she begins, before he gets the chance. “I’m actually not surprised.” Marinette peers up at him. “Things are… pretty mutual.” Pauses, and amends, “When I’m Ladybug, I mean. Not at all like when I’m Marinette.”

Nino frowns.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Should I… Should I not have mentioned it?”

“No, I’m glad you did.”

She smiles at him a little, like a boon, or a consolation— _they're in the elevator all damn over again_ —because there’s nothing superficial about it, so he wants to believe that this is for the best—that opening up hurts, but it can _help_ —that maybe, things can be messy, and fixed without magic, or superheroes, or something supernaturally miraculous.

Just with friends, telling the truth. 

//

 

“Oh. Also, for the record—Adrien is also pretty convinced that I’m, like, in love with you.”

Marinette blinks. She is _astonished_.

“Yeah, I know,” Nino smiles back, and it’s a little awkward, and his cheeks are a little warm. He’s still a little embarrassed (about the crush), still a little rattled (about everything), and still a little guilty (about the last five minutes), he can’t help it. “So that may or may not have something to do with it, too?”

Marinette shakes his head. “No. I’m pretty sure we know how he feels about Ladybug. There isn’t very much Marinette could do to change his mind.”

“Well, hold on, wait—”

“But what about Alya?” she interrupts. “Doesn’t he know?” Nino tries to think of a better-sounding excuse than what he's got, but Marinette isn’t having it. “ _Nino!_ Adrien doesn’t know?”

“Like I said—we haven’t really made things super official? Alya does like to keep things private, as you know. Her philosophy is that if people care enough to notice, or ask, then we tell the truth. But otherwise, why bother sharing? Like—it definitely hasn’t changed how act around others. For all that he’s pretty observant, Adrien hasn’t actually even asked me about Alya yet!”

 _Asked me about you, though_ , he thinks, but does not add. He wonders what that’s about.

Marinette snorts. “Is that _because_ she’s a journalist or in spite of it?”

“Ha! You would know better than I would.” Then, “But yeah. So that’s a thing.”

“Hm. Did you try to correct him?”

“Yeah, _duh_ , of course, but I don’t really know what he thinks about what I said? Like—whatever led him onto this idea seems pretty cemented, I guess.”

“That’s weird,” Marinette lists her head to the side. “You spent an hour trapped with Ladybug in an elevator, and he winds up thinking that you like _me?_ What on earth made him think that?”

“Yeah, I dunno.” Seriously, now that they’re talking about it out loud, it makes even less sense. “The guy is pretty clever? But also, like, half the time I never know what the hell he’s thinking, lol.”

“Did you just ‘lol’ out loud.”

“Let me live.”

“Yes, right. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.” Marinette’s head ticks and tilts as something new occurs to her; Nino is surprised to recognize that he knows what that actually looks like now. It’s so Ladybug he actually wants to punch himself in the face, how did he not _know_ before, _what is with this stupid magic!!_ “So wait—what did he think about you spending so much time with Ladybug?”

“Ugghhhhh.”

Nino covers his face with a book he swipes from Marinette’s desk. It’s about sewing, or something. “That’s a long story.” When he looks back to Marinette on the bed, her dry glare is framed by the chin-prop of her palm, and Tikki has somehow managed to procure a miniature bar of chocolate and _hey_.

(—isn't that his?!  
Okay, fine. Let the Ancient Being eat his chocolate: she probably needs it more than he does.  
Marinette could probably use one too, actually.)

Nino stares, uncertain. “Are you sure you are okay with hearing this?”

Marinette shrugs, which isn’t really reassuring. “I think… there’s a lot for my brain to sort through right now. This might help?”

He hesitates. “I’m really not sure about that.”

She shrugs again. It’s Marinette who’s lying casually on the bed, but it’s Ladybug who is staring him down—and then, in a split second, he realizes how much they really, really are the same. _Is this magic more powerful than we thought_ , he wonders _, or is Marinette just getting more comfortable with combining the two?_

“Maybe it will make me sad, and maybe it won’t. Maybe I’m just curious,” she declares, like that settles it. “Indulge me.”

Nino considers. _Well,_ he thinks. _I’ve told her this much already_ …

“Actually,” he reveals. “I was kinda surprised by his reaction? Like—he _clearly_ , undeniably has feelings for Ladybug, so of course he was a little jelly that I actually interacted with you---like, in-person, in the suit---so that’s not the surprise. But like. His biggest interest in my elevator conversation with Ladybug wasn’t even… like.”

“What?”

“Okay, so: even though he’s completely goddamn-golden-halo-head-over-designer-kick-heels, all Adrien wanted to talk about was how much Ladybug might like Chat Noir.”

For a moment, she’s too stunned to respond—then Marinette leans back so fast, Tikki goes flying off her shoulder. Her lips have parted.

Nino is confused: _he’d_ found Adrien’s fixation a little perplexing, but he hadn’t been expecting Marinette to be so shocked about it.

Marinette looks truly troubled by this development. Her voice is breathless. “ _What?_ ”

“Well... yeah,” Nino holds her gaze, and feels himself growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment; he hadn’t expect _this_ adverse of a reaction. “I mean, he’s always had a super intense fixation on Ladybug, not too different from how obsessive Alya can get—which, _wow_ , by the way: does it ever weird you out to think about how many of your friends and classmates and adult support figures, like, _idolize_ you?—but then I found out he’s got an even weirder fascination with them being together as partners. So when he was asking me all about what happened, Adrien wasn’t even interested in trying to, like... get _closer_ to Ladybug. For himself. I think he’s like—Ladybug and Chat’s biggest romantic couple-fan? He thinks it’s, like, super obvious that they’re meant for each other. Alya calls it ‘shipping’, I dunno, you’ll have to ask her for the jargon. But yeah, I don’t know, Adrien’s a cool guy, but he’s a _confusing_ guy sometimes, tryna lowkey fantasize about his infatuation riding off into the sunset with someone other than himself. Can’t ever actually figure out what the heck he’s thinking, but yeah. Did I mention loyal?”

“Wait,” Marinette’s shut her eyes. Her brows are furrowed. Tikki is holding onto her shoulder by clinging to the bundles in her cable-knit sweater, intrigued. “Hold on… Are you telling me that Adrien is… actually _hoping_ for Ladybug to… get together with Chat Noir? Because he thinks they’re _meant_ to be together?”

“Well,” Nino hedges, “lots of people think Ladybug and Chat Noir will get together.”

 _Chat Noir thinks they'll get together._ He doesn't say it out loud, but.

The color drains from Marinette’s face.

 _Ah—_ he thinks, and his chest jumps with a _notion_.

As silence draws out, Nino watches the thoughts flicker behind Marinette’s eyes. Slowly, Nino leans himself forward, until his forearms are resting on his thighs, until his hands are dangling between his knees, until he’s hunched over and looking at Marinette’s face levelly, so he can watch her put the pieces of the puzzle together, so he can put together his own.

 _Oh_ , Nino thinks, when the alarm registers clearly on Marinette’s face. _Snap._

(Because it's _Ladybug's_ face, too; for all that he laments  
Marinette needing reminders about who she is... apparently,  
he could still use a few, himself.)

Nino treads cautiously.

“Is… Ladybug _not_ interested in… Chat Noir?” He pauses. “I mean. I know there's Adrien, but… even a little?" Nino tries to search her face for answers, but she is giving nothing away. Even the mask doesn't hide her emotions this well. "Have you ever considered...? Like, maybe even… after Hawkmoth is defeated?” His lips frown. “Maybe?”

Marinette swallows.

“It’s... kind of hard, to think that far ahead,” she says, and he believes her, but he believes her eyes, too, which are still very pretty, and confused—and he's not sure what to think, honestly, but he notices the tiniest flush, just starting over her cheeks—and it all tells a complex, conflicted, considerable story.

  
//

 _Well, shit_ , Nino frowns.

That’s a mess.

//

“Nino, I mean it. I'm really glad you told me.”

“Hey. I'm really glad you told me, too.”  
 

//

The next time an akuma strikes, Chat Noir is practically giddy at the prospect of seeing her.

But when he sees her, she’s so distracted, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“I’m sorry, Kitty,” she sighs, once the akuma is finally done and gone. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind. You see, I—it’s been a hard week. I’ve realized some things lately, and… I think I’m just trying to put myself a bit back together again. I should be in better shape soon enough.”

“What happened?”

“I…” For a moment, it’s almost certain she’s going to tell him…

But that’s not really what they do, is it?

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with this stuff,” she smiles, and he pretends that it’s fine. “I’ll be okay.”

When she leaves, Chat Noir feels a little piece of himself chip off and float on after her. Today, her face had looked an awful lot like the way his chest _usually_ feels, when Adrien is sitting at the table with a fancy meal and no appetite, all alone.

He’s not sure what’s happening exactly, but he has a feeling that the Ladybug who embraced him in the alley near the school grounds isn’t the same Ladybug who told him today, _I’ll be okay_.

  
//

A week passes, and:

If there's anything to be said about how nosy high schoolers are, Adrien thinks, it's that it's not _all_ of them.

Alya may be a journalistic _fiend_ , but she is a friend first and foremost: after Nino made clear that no information about the Elevator Incident was forthcoming, Alya took it upon herself to ensure that no other individual thought themselves different. If she couldn't crack the code, then they certainly had no point in trying.

It helps, some.

But what is really most helpful is the way Marinette always chimes in, whenever Nino starts to lose the edge that keeps the vultures at bay. Sometimes there are simply too many busy-bodies for Nino to fend off completely, and as much as Adrien likes to believe he does a decent job of giving moral support and reminding his classmates to lay off, there really is no comparison to the take-no-prisoners attitude of a morally-incensed Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Student Class President. She’s already done wonders to spark school community clean-up efforts in only a matter of a few days, to the point where the Mr. Morier-turned-The Sudster practically weeps over how sparkling the floors are kept throughout the day now.

"How many more times does he have to tell you!" she glares up at the pack of seniors, completely unfazed by the way they completely tower over her. Although Adrien isn't actually surprised at this point, it's still always a bit awe-inspiring. Even Alya looks impressed. Nino, meanwhile, stands with his arms crossed, looking much more smug than the whole situation probably warrants. He clearly enjoys having Marinette as a knight in shining armor.

As Marinette stomps away and Nino follows—with a click of the tongue and a finger-gun—Adrien deadpans. Alya laughs.

He sighs, and follows them all inside. 

//

(Adrien wonders why Nino still hesitates in opening up about still crushing on her. He knows the zoo date got botched after Animan interrupted them, and things kind of just faded out from there, but…  Is he worried about what Adrien will say? What _Alya_ will say?)

It's not right to think it, but—at least forty-two times a day—Adrien considers the following premise: if Nino likes Marinette, there's probably a better chance that he won't like Ladybug, right?)

 

//

And. It's not like—what.

Like _Adrien_ has a shot or anything.

But like—  
  
  
//

  
(Nino had a whole hour and some minutes in an elevator with her. He secretly knows her secret identity.  
If anybody has a shot—it'd be Nino, wouldn't it?

It'd be Nino.)

//

Nino pulls Marinette aside in the hallway, after classes. They're supposed to meet up with Alya and Adrien back at the homeroom, but they'd both ventured off in the name of bathrooms and vending machines, courtesy of Nino’s expertly-timed, covert distress signal, in the shape of a precisely-executed kick to the back of Marinette’s chair, exactly four minutes ago, when the bell rang.

“Hey,” he says quietly, because he doesn't know if either of the others might pop up behind them in the search of a snack. “Are you sure you wanna? Alya’s definitely cool with us breaking off into actual partners, if it's too weird for all of us to work together today.”

“Yeah, don't worry, I got an earful at lunch today about my _options_... You two matchmakers certainly did a one-eighty, didn't you?”

 _I wouldn't be so sure,_ but Nino keeps that to himself.

Instead, he grins. “Hey. I'm just following your lead, lady.”

Marinette cocks her head to the side, considering.

“Ohh. Is that too close?”

“It might be,” she admits. “I'm not sure.”

Nino nods, and grins wider then. “I'll keep it in the back pocket, and think of another nickname, then.”

“Oh no,” Marinette hangs her head, forehead in palm. “Really?”

“Yeah! You don't have one for me?”

“Sure I do,” she says, and starts to walk back to class. “It's Ni-NOOOOO.”

“Ugh. YOU’RE KIDDING.”

“Nope.”

“UGHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

//

  
“Hey,” Adrien jerks a thumb at the TV, which is broadcasting a live urgent update on Mr. Bourgeois’ most recent claims of a security breach for the recordings of the elevator in which Ladybug was once trapped. “Are you seeing this?”

“Holy shit,” Nino’s hand flies to the top of his head, landing square over his hat. Adrien’s eyes linger on the movement, but Nino isn’t paying attention to his attention. “Did they find anything?”

“No—listen,” says Adrien, and snags the remote from next to Marinette’s hand to turn up the volume. Sure enough, the reports are saying that—in spite of his attempts to recover the security camera recordings, nothing has been found. “Someone _stole_ the files!”

“Shit!”

Adrien’s eyes snap back to Nino’s; a demanding brow arches so high, Plagg might have actually been proud.

“No, it’s not cuz of—I just mean that it _has_ to be the work of Hawkmoth, right?” Nino’s voice sounds too anxious to sound anything but genuine. Adrien’s eyes catch on Marinette’s profile, beside him at the coffee table in her living room, but she’s too stunned to speak. It’s only when his gaze travels to Alya’s that he…

“It was _you_ ,” he declares.

Nino rounds on her. “Wait a minute— _what!_ ”

Alya’s arms cross, and Adrien’s eyes narrow. “ _What?_ ” she snaps.

Nino blinks at her, once, twice— “Oh my god… It _was_ you!”

Adrien turns the volume back down, but only slightly. Alya is definitely smirking now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. _I_ certainly haven’t learned how to access Mr. Bourgeois’ embarrassingly weak security system and log into his archives simply by using the same password— _Chloe#1_ —for every single access point. And I definitely wouldn’t have read up on how to completely erase all traces of security camera footage from the database.”

“Wait, you did _what,_ exactly?”

“Oh come on, Adrien,” Alya huffs. “ _You_ may still be friends with her, which is _fine_ , sure, but we couldn’t just let Chloe just force her way into getting to the bottom of it!”

Adrien balks. “You _sabotaged_ the security camera feed!”

(And: _Holy shit—_  
Why didn’t I think of that?  
Wasn’t destroying things technically  
supposed to be his specialty?)

(Speaking of: Adrien hopes he’s okay—Plagg said he wouldn’t mind just napping inside his backpack for the next few hours, but he can’t help but worry. What if he gets hungry? What if he runs out of snacks? Can he smell the croissants on the coffee table, or the snacks left out in the bowls on the counter in Marinette’s kitchen? Adrien shoots a quick glance to where all four of their backpacks are huddled together on the floor. At some point, Marinette’s bag had fallen over, and it’s leaning into his—is Plagg being crushed alive? What could possibly be in Marinette’s bag that’s so heavy? Is Plagg _suffocating—_?)

( _No, calm down, Agreste, jesus._ The kwami has survived this many eons without coddling from a—)

“Hold up,” Nino’s hand is raised high, like it actually might slow things down. “Isn’t that a criminal offense?”

“There was clearly something Ladybug didn’t want us to _see_ ,” Alya argues, utterly ferocious, and Adrien’s open mouth slants uncomfortably when she pointedly _does not answer Nino’s question._  “Why else would she have covered up the security camera? Do you think she wanted the whole world to know that she _needed_ to take that precaution? No. Of course not. Well, _now_ we don’t have to worry about anyone who wants to dig their noses where they don’t belong having anything to question in the first place!”

“Wait a minute,” Marinette holds up a hand herself, and Adrien almost startles; he’d forgotten she was so close; he’d almost forgotten she was there. “How do we know someone didn’t already see the footage? What if they already viewed Ladybug obscuring the lens, and _then_ see that someone has hacked in and erased it from the memory bank?”

Alya held up a Victory sign, shaking her head. “There’s a log inside the system. Mr. Bourgeois and his team either simply hadn’t thought to check—which, I mean, come on, yeah right, _really guys_ , aren’t adults supposed to be experts at this?—or they had purposefully not investigated in order to help protect Ladybug’s identity.”

“Yeah—until his rabid daughter tried to stir up the pot.”

“ _Nino_ ,” admonishes Adrien, who jumps when he realizes that the hadn’t spoken alone: Marinette blinks back at Adrien’s astonishment.

“Doesn’t change the facts,” Nino insists. “So what are you betting, then?”

“I don’t know,” Alya bites the inside of her cheek. ”I mean, I guess they _may_ have gotten too caught up in the hype to realize that they actually had the means to look inside the elevator… or _thought_ they had, at least.” Alya’s thoughtful expression turns predatory. “Either way, it doesn’t matter now. They’re having way too many technical difficulties.”

“Yeah, but what about the audio feed?” Nino asks, oddly intent. “Did they catch that, too?”

Adrien’s and Alya’s eyes both widen with surprise, but Marinette’s brow merely dips sly. “Why?” she challenges, and Adrien has never heard her so wry. “So we can relive the riveting tale of whether Ladybug prefers green or blue?”

 _What_ does _she prefer?_ Adrien wonders, before he can help it, but quickly enough his attention is caught by Nino’s deadpan glare: “Hey—that’s a valid question! What if Hawkmoth tried to get his hands on some sort of voice-recognition thing?”

“Nino, that’s _absolutely_ —huh.” Alya blinks at him, perplexed.

Adrien’s stomach drops all over again. “ _Could_ that happen?”

“No,” Alya says immediately, but she seems unsure. “As far as the elevator goes—elevators don’t typically have voice recordings, and this one didn’t, at all. I double-checked. But… Nino does bring up a rather disconcerting point in general, doesn’t it? I mean—what’s stopping anyone from pulling any of Ladybug’s news reports and running some checks on their own?” Alya’s eyes widen. “What’s stopping _me_?”

There’s a cloud looming over them now. Marinette looks particularly drawn, and the furrow between Nino’s brows keeps growing. “Hang on,” Adrien says. “Are you saying that you’d actually starting using her _voice_ recordings to try to identify her?”

“No!” Alya snaps… hesitates. “I’m just saying that… technically I _could_.” She scoffs. “So it’s probable that some other people might jump to similar conclusions.”

“But there has to be something in her magic that would prevent that,” Marinette speaks up, and Adrien snaps his gaze to her profile once more. “Just like when Lady Wi-Fi tried to physically remove her mask, right? Maybe—something would get jumbled in the recording system, if someone were to try to link it for comparison.”

“Hmm,” Alya pressed her index finger to her lips. “It’s an interesting hypothesis… Too bad it’s not something we can really test, huh? Maybe Ladybug would let me interview her on the basis of checking for magical complications within the recording devices… Do you think me being Lady Wi-Fi in the past would discourage her from cooperating? I wonder if—”

Adrien looks up, just in time to see Nino and Marinette exchanging thoughtful looks. His frown tugs uncomfortably.

“Wow,” Adrien finds himself interrupting, even though he really hadn’t planned to make any noise at all, then scrambles for a topic when the others simultaneously look to him, three sets of gazes sharp like unexpected pins in the apples of his cheeks. “So—wow. As of right now, we have no real way of knowing just how bad of an exposure risk it could have been for Ladybug if they’d bugged the elevator.”

Alya shakes her head, and sighs at him. “Oh, Adrien… did you just turn a _crucial_ question of identity-reveal and supernatural forces into a pun? I swear you’re turning into Chat Noir.”

Adrien almost— _almost_ —dips his head down—to _check_ —but instead he flatlines his gaze and says, “Chat Noir’s puns happen to be _inspired_ , thank you,” and then stops himself there, because this is getting way, way too close; Ladybug is doing all that she possibly can to keep her identity a secret, fighting every step of the way, and _here_ , he’s just playing with it, practically _dangling_ it in front of his friends like—like a—

“No,” Marinette is laughing a tiny bit, and her cheeks have dusted pink with a fresh glow of warmth. “No, believe me—Chat Noir’s puns are much, much worse.”

Adrien’s whole body turns, and his lips part in surprise. What?

(Was that a compliment?) (To Adrien?) (About his puns?) He doesn’t _think_ it’s a compliment for him, exactly.

But with the way Marinette is looking back down at her essay draft, smiling to herself, like she's thinking about something—or _someone_ —and the way his stomach floods warm at the sight of it—it’s… definitely not an insult to Chat, either.

He suddenly has a thousand questions.

(In the exact same moment that Adrien remembers exactly _who_ Chat Noir saw while exiting the school grounds on the day of The Sudster—and when, and with whom, and why this had been such a relief, before—)

Nino dips a very curious brow towards Marinette, leans towards her with a hand propping his chin, and suggestively levels a small, “Oh?”

Marinette’s response to Nino is only to glare.

Wait—Adrien is confused. Why is Nino insinuating— _is he?_ —that Marinette might have an interest in Chat Noir’s puns? Doesn’t Nino have an interest in Marinette? What, who, _what_ , _who_ is Marinette interested in?

“She would know,” Alya says proudly, like a proud den mother displaying her kin’s newest merit badge, sewn neatly into an assorted array on her sash. “She’s gone on enough impromptu missions with him. If there’s anyone who’d know, it’s Marinette!” She laughs to herself. “Besides Ladybug, of course.”

Nino whips his head back around so fast toward Marinette that his hat actually tilts down over one ear, and Marinette continues to dismiss Nino’s curiosity with a gaze that Adrien himself would be hard-pressed to provoke; Nino, however, apparently has no such qualms. “Oh, _really_ ,” he says, like a death wish.

Adrien’s mind is spinning out of control, but Alya’s razor-sharp perception has always been lightning fast: she grabs Marinette’s arm and interrupts Marinette’s yelp of surprise before it even fully forms. “Wait a minute, here—just how often exactly _have_ you ended up supporting Chat Noir?”

Nino’s eyebrows waggle. “He _did_ call you Princess, before he fought The Sudster.”

Alya gasps. “Actually! I’ve heard him call you Princess, _too!_ ”

Adrien’s stomach is tumbling, Alya is gasping with _authority_ , and Marinette—she’s blushing. (Oh god.) (Is Adrien blushing?) (That wouldn’t make sense to _anyone._ ) (Adrien hopes he’s not blushing.) Marinette is pink, and glaring.

“You guys,” she narrows her eyes. Adrien jolts when Marinette’s eyes flit to his, and then away. Her blush deepens, and her voice takes on a deliberate strain. “You know that’s ridiculous.”

Something sharp shoots straight through Adrien’s chest.

Out slips, “Why?”

He hadn’t meant to ask it out loud. (Is he blushing too now?) (At last?) (Oh god, he can’t tell.) (What would they even think? They couldn’t possibly guess—even _he_ doesn’t know exactly—) But he wants to know. Why _is_ it so ridiculous that someone—Marinette—might like… oh. Wait. This is complicated.

Maybe he doesn’t want to entertain this many trains of thought at once.

“All right,” Marinette rears herself up, and gently extracts her arm from Alya’s grasp. Faces Nino: “That’s enough out of _you_ , thank you very much.” To Alya: “If there was something to tell, I promise that _you_ , of all people, would know—believe me _._ ” She ignores Nino’s sharp burst of laughter, and Adrien is almost so distracted by Nino’s wholly amused countenance that he is not entirely prepared for when a blushing Marinette turns to him in turn: “Adrien, I’m sorry. This is probably not what you expected when you came over to work on the history essay.”

Oh god, do they still have to work on that?

“Uh… no,” he he tries to dismiss, but it feels so formal and stiff, so _polite_ , feels so awkward on his tongue without the purr to smooth it out. “It’s fine.”

Marinette’s eyes roll towards the ceiling, halfway through a sigh, but then Alya finally decides to whip all of them back onto the right track again, because even a (laughing) Nino is reluctantly persuaded into actually cracking open his history textbook, and Marinette takes three minutes of refuge in the quick trip she makes downstairs to retrieve the box of danishes her parents had prepared for them—true to Nino’s word—and Alya is already in _divide-and-conquer_ mode by the time Marinette returns with a fresh smile and fresh pastries, and.

Although there is still a bit of a glow about her, the blush has all but faded.

During the hour and a half that they actually manage to be productive in working on their papers, Adrien thinks no less than six times about the fact that this may very well be the most personal conversation they’ve ever shared between the four of them. Has Marinette ever been so open around _him_? Have Nino and Marinette gotten even friendlier, somehow? Did they really just have a conversation in which it was suggested that Marinette might… be hiding something about Chat Noir?

Adrien catches himself stealing glimpses of Marinette while they work. (Have Marinette and Nino always sat so close, so comfortably? Marinette and Alya share space like it’s nothing, and it seems like she and Nino are following suit.)

(Where does that leave Adrien?)

Sometime later, as they are starting to wrap up, a corner of Marinette's notepad slips too closely into his workspace. He's about to shuffle his things around and make more room for her, when he sees that there is a note written very very small at the bottom.

_Are you all right?_

_Yeah_ , Adrien writes, almost too small to read, along the top margin of his own notes. _Just thinking._ Adds, _Napoleon isn’t exactly a fun guy to write about,_ and an afterthought of a smiley face that screams ‘overkill’ so hard it's a wonder he can't hear it. The restraint needed to not throw in a pun, for good measure, is a physical pain.

Marinette doesn't answer with another note. She flashes a quick strain of a smile that tells him she doesn't really believe him, but won't ask anymore, and as they each turn back to Alya's final overview of the upcoming exam, Adrien thinks that it may actually be a problem, having such perceptive people around.

  
//

"Don't think I don't know that you're hiding something."

"I—what?"

"Just tell me this,” Alya steps closer, and Nino’s mouth runs dry. “If somebody were to find out that you were in that elevator with Ladybug and she _felt_ that she needed to cover up whatever happened while you both were in there, would you be in mortal danger?”

"Yeah," he says, tongue like cotton. "Loads."

Alya looks at him.

"Okay," she says. "I figured. That's all I needed to know."

And then she plants a kiss on his cheek and pats him in the shoulder as she stalks past him, and Nino is left tongue-tied and staring at a spot on the far wall.

Some time later, Marinette finds him. "There you are! What are you doing? We've been—uh. Hello?" 

//

 

It’s another four days before a new akuma attacks. During the inevitable monologue, Chat spends more time wondering what he’s done to make Ladybug stand so far away from him, rather than focusing on retrieving the akumatized conductor’s wand, like he should be.

When they finally summon the Lucky Charm that allows them to shut down The Conductor’s speakers and jam the signal, he doesn’t even manage a pun.

“You know, I’d actually thought I’d had enough technical difficulties for one week,” Ladybug’s grinning gaze lowers from the sight of the bright little butterfly to the human on the sidewalk ahead of them. “Guess I had it in me for one more?” When her gaze reaches Chat Noir’s, her grin falters. He feels it like a blow.

Chat Noir doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he’s working with a completely different Ladybug today. Why is she being so distant?

Her eyes catch sight of something behind him, and then— “I have to go. I’ll see you later, Chat.”

Chat Noir just watches as she flies. Her yo-yo mostly drowns out the sounds of the running footsteps behind him, but he can still tell when someone stops short just a few feet away, panting. He looks back, and finds Alya.

“Dammit,” she hisses, staring at the spot where Ladybug had disappeared. “ _Now_ what am I… oh! Chat Noir! I have something to tell you! Is there any chance I could—”

Adrien knows what she is going to say, and he wants to help, but Chat Noir’s ring flashes too insistently for its own good, and there’s not really much else he can do.

“Sorry,” he waves, and he means it. “Maybe next time.” 

//

"I couldn't manage to get close enough, fast enough for a clear sample," Alya slumps in defeat the next day, and Marinette rubs a hand over her shoulder. Adrien notices.

"Maybe next time?" Marinette says, and Alya _groans._

//

"I discovered something important," Ladybug confides to Chat, the next night in the dark under the Paris tower lights. He’s so shocked by how close she suddenly is that he almost falls off the beam.

He places a hand over his heart, if only to hide the fact that it’s racing a lot faster than it ought to be. "That I am your one and only?" His eyelashes flutter, but it’s only to hide the nervous tic—she was barely talking to him yesterday, and now she’s sharing Important Discoveries?

"That we can't be traced back to our civilian identities through the sounds of our voices."

Chat straightens up as smoothly as he sobers. Did Alya’s plan work?

"How did you learn that?” he asks, and he sounds so much like Adrien instead of Chat Noir, that he almost looks down, to check. “What do you mean?"

"I can't say, but once the idea took, I ran some tests: I am almost positive we're in the clear."

That’s—that’s comforting, right? But: "How did you manage to find the right equipment? What did you do to check?"

"I know someone who specializes in sound," she smiles wryly. "I used their equipment."

A crease forms between his brows.

"Huh."

“Yeah, isn’t that interesting? I wasn’t sure it’d work. It definitely makes me feel better about what happened with the elevator. I feel like I can finally relax a bit more.”

Chat looks over at her, all the Paris night sky behind her, and wonders, _Yeah, but_ will _you?_

When she takes off for the evening, content that no sign of an akuma is on the rise, Chat lingers behind on the beam.

He’s not sure he’s found his answer.

//

Adrien notices four major things, that week:

Nino and Marinette and Alya and Adrien spend more and more time together.

Ladybug's smiles start to show less and less teeth, and she starts to talk more with her gaze than her _words_ , and he gets the impression that it's hurting her to be around him just as much as it hurts to look at her.

Adrien goes home to the mansion after another evening at Marinette's apartment, all pastries and projects and friends, and takes hours to fall asleep.

Plagg tells him that it’s not _unusual_ , for Ladybugs to start to feel the burden of their responsibility in different ways: there is no point in worrying about their dynamic; if he wants to know what’s going on, he should just ask her. Or—at least, that’s what Plagg _would_ have said, if he weren’t so damn lazy.

 _Worrying is pointless, kid,_ is actually much closer to what he _had_ said. _If you’re this upset about it, then do something about it—your anxiety is fraying my whiskers._

Adrien wonders how, with such brilliant friends around him and such an amazing partner and such a wizened being in his life—with such supernatural powers, and such _purpose—_ he can still wake up every morning feeling like he’s done something irrevocably wrong.

//

  
“I’ve noticed you’ve been spending a lot of time with Marinette lately,” Adrien says one morning, when he thinks Nino will still be too sleepy to be anything but honest.

Nino yawns. “Huh? Oh, yeah—we’ve just been finding more stuff in common, I guess? And she’s been going through some stuff lately.”

“Oh.” Adrien hadn’t been expecting that. “Is she... okay?”

“Yeah, she’s okay.”

“I… haven’t really noticed?”

“Nah, ya wouldn’t have, man,” Nino says, like it’s nothing, like _it’s no big deal_ , like it’s no surprise, and the casual assumption hits Adrien like a swift punch to the gut, though maybe it eases off, a bit, when Nino continues, “Marinette is really good at hiding things these days.”

//

  
That evening, Adrien _tells_ himself that there isn’t a specific reason why he’s curious, that there isn’t anything in particular that is making him decide to—

  
//

"Princess," greets Chat Noir, standing at the top of the stone steps she has halfway climbed. She startles and looks up, and he can't help but delight in the little "o" her mouth shapes when she sees him—just before it slants into his favorite note of exasperation. He’d like to think it feels fond.

"Starting patrol a little early, aren't you?" Marinette prompts, a little sunset in her hair, then continues up the flight of stairs; she's not looking at him, but that's okay; he hasn’t actually seen her in a while, but now that he’s here, he's already starting to realize how much he likes the way she acknowledges him in other ways, how she responds and reacts to him with her whole presence, her aura, the way he can feel how pleased she is to see him. He's always liked how talkative Marinette is with Chat Noir; his openness might be contagious, or maybe they just have a chemistry of friendship that comes from a civilian and superhero occasionally buddying up, or maybe this is just how Marinette usually acts—with friends who are not Adrien.

(And Adrien has _tried_ ,  
and he's tried to make amends for the first impression gone wrong, but  
no matter what he's done, he can't quite seem to break whatever mistrust he's forced her into, and he  
doesn't know how to—)

But then Marinette smiles a certain shade of happy, and Chat Noir likes to think that this one is, in a way, his singular influence.

Chat Noir grins when Marinette reaches his step, and still has to tilt her head to gaze up at him. It's a familiar difference.

"You shouldn't stick around for too long, in case Hawkmoth starts to catch onto your love of my family's croissants," Marinette says, half in jest yet too serious for comfort, "but if you've got a minute, you should swing by and grab a snack."

Adrien shouldn't; Chat will.

"Why, thank you, Princess," he bows, deep and gracious, and rights himself to the sight of a most tremendous eye roll. He delights. "I could most certainly enjoy another danish," he grins, and falls into step.

A crease forms between Marinette's brows. "Another?"

Chat blanches—

"Ah. Your family gave me one, when I—the Animan. When we were protecting Kim. Why? Is that not what they're called? There's so many names, I get confused."

Marinette shakes her head and grins, and Chat only barely allows the breath of relief. He's getting too lax, too _comfortable_ , whereas Ladybug's reins on her identity are pulling ever tighter.

(And there,  
maybe _that's_  
the reason why—)

"You're lucky you have a friend whose family owns a bakery, then, if you're so quick to forget." Her grin is there on her mouth, but the smiles is in her eyes, and that’s thing that really hits him in the chest—that, and the way she mentions, so easily; the way that she calls him a friend.

"Yeah," he agrees, and his cheeks hurt a little because he doesn't usually smile this genuinely, but it's okay. "Lucky I have you."

Marinette gets the strangest look on her face, and his stomach flips, but then she launches into a lecture on the differences between seven different kinds of pastries, and he eats up every word.

  
//

An akuma attacks while they’re out at the park, _trying_ to study—Alya has been waiting for this moment for over a week now, and immediately executes her plans to break away and somehow get close enough to the scene to test her voice recognition hypothesis. (It actually sucks, not being able to tell her that he's _heard_ the results, straight from the source.) (But maybe it's better to get a second opinion, anyway? Maybe Alya will be able to find something new—) Alya scurries off without so much as a quick " _See ya!_ " and Nino scoops up her schoolbooks into his own bag without a second thought. " _Be careful!_ " they call after her, the running hellbent woman that she is.

Adrien makes up an excuse about getting home to the manor before they even have a moment to ask—and it occurs to him, in that split second, if he might be considered selfish for not inviting _them_ to the huge high-tech overloaded-security complex; how he might explain himself out of the mansion with two houseguests and a super-perceptive-Nathalie in time enough to go meet up with Ladybug—but Marinette promptly announces that they should also rush to safety, and text later, once the coast is clear. He readily agrees, and they take off, and Adrien spares one more look back before he rounds the corner and searches for the nearest alleyway, somewhere safe to transform.

He wonders when it'd become so natural for Nino to place his hand on the small of Marinette's back, as they run away.

  
//

“ _Shit_ , that was way too close!” Nino’s out of breath, and his heart won’t _shut up_. “What the hell is that akuma’s problem?”

“That’s usually the key to defeating the akuma,” Marinette deadpans, which is insulting, but only marginally, and at least she’s in a better mood than she was during the last akuma attack. (She couldn't get out of the 'I Think Things Are Changing Between Chat Noir and Ladybug' funk for at  _least_ a solid-day-and-a-half, okay, and he and Tikki would rather not go through that again anytime soon, thank you—) In any case, Nino would like to think that Operation: Moral Support is helping, even if only a little bit.

“You think Chat’s already there?”

“Probably,” she mutters, peering around the corner of the little alleyway they’d slipped into. There were too many people still running past though, and Nino was also thinking up Plan B's for if this place didn’t clear out in the next two minutes. “He’s been arriving to the scene much faster than I have these days…”

“You’re not implying that I’m slowing you down, are you?”

“Oh, hush,” she scoffs, which is more comforting than anything else she could have possibly said. She sounds more like herself again, and Nino can’t suppress a grin.

Then Nino spies her moving a hand down to her purse, and he sees Tikki’s glowing eyes peering out through the crack. “We’re gonna need to find another spot, I think,” she sighs. “There’s way too many people here.”

Nino leans close to peer around the corner with her. “Okay, I know a place—it’s only a four minute walk, and it’s in an area with less foot traffic than this close to the park.”

“Do you walk around there a lot?”

“No, I Google Maps’d it.”

Marinette turns back over her shoulder to look at him. “Just now?”

“No—I researched a couple of different potential transformation points all across the city, last week.” Marinette blinks at him. “Do you wanna try here, instead?”

Her eyes flutter rapidly. “Uh… no. No. Let’s try your spot.”

Nino beams.

“Hell _yes_.”

//  
 

Chat slides his gaze over to her when she perches next to him on the rooftop. It’s hard to describe the ache he feels in his chest, when she greets him with a small, knowing smile and then immediately sinks into fighting position.

So he doesn’t.

“Hello, my Lady,” he grins, wishing this would stop being so damn awkward. “Nice of you to drop by.”

The akuma begins his monologue before his actual cue, so Chat doesn’t get to hear what Ladybug might have said in response. She’s already cataloguing his movements, searching for the source of the little malicious butterfly.

“It’s in his pendant,” she hisses to him, when she’s actually only a few feet away. It’s been so long since they bothered to get this close, he’s not really sure how to feel about it. “You distract him, and I’ll yo-yo it out?”

Chat Noir doesn’t know how to describe this sensation.

He’d never thought saving the world would feel this much like a chore.

He’d never thought Ladybug’s somber, apologetic gaze could feel so heavy.

“Yeah,” he says, with a nod. “Same as usual.”

Something flickers in Ladybug’s eyes, but then the akuma makes a lunge, and Adrien doesn’t really have time to think about it anymore.

  
//

“Chat,” says Ladybug, when the two of them should really be making a break for cover. “If it seems like I’ve been distant this last week or so… I’m really sorry.”

“My Lady,” he says, but it’s too breathy, so he tries to pass it off as a laugh. “There’s no need to apologize,” when in truth his chest is bursting with the ache to hear it. Maybe not an apology—an explanation. Anything.

“It’s just… look. I don’t have enough time to explain, but I want you to know: very recently, somebody broke my heart,” she drops, casually, like Chat’s whole world hasn’t just been flipped upside-down, “by accident. They don’t really have any idea.”

“What?” Chat whispers. “ _How?_ ”

“They… it’s a long story. They didn’t really know about my feelings.”

Adrien clings. “Didn’t?”

“Don’t,” Ladybug corrects. “I just... the feelings will probably always be there, at least a little bit, but they’re not as strong as before. It was a good revelation, I guess.”

Chat doesn’t feel any sort of relief. “So this was… you feel better about this, now?”

Her lips quirk into a frown. “Not really. Because—my heart got broken by someone who didn’t mean to do it. It’s not their fault, it’s not mine, but it still hurt. And the reason I’ve been acting so distant lately is—I don’t want to do the same to you.”

Chat looks down at her face, speechless.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“That’s… wow,” he says. “Oh.”

“You’re my partner,” she says, and when she takes a step closer, he has to resist the urge to take another in, to take a step back. “We’re in this together… But I can barely keep my head above the water as it is,” she sighs. “And I’m afraid of… us getting ahead of ourselves.”

Chat Noir can actually feel a thread of irritation rising. With Ladybug—that’s new.

“I wouldn’t ask anything of you,” he tells her, because she deserves to hear it, could use the reminder—but it _hurts_ , almost. Someone has hurt her— _and how? who?—_ and she took the burden all on her own, and now it's been clouding their partnership, made her think that she’d need to keep her distance from him, to—to what? Protect him? Protect his feelings?

Too late.

“I know,” Ladybug whispers, and he thinks she means it. “And I’m sorry. I’ll try not to be so… so hard to reach, again. Just know that... things have really been changing since that day in the elevator, and I wish I could tell you the half of it, but I just—I’m not sure it’s—oh,” her fingers fly to hover over her earrings, which have begun to panic. Her gaze snaps to his, and he can see it in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Chat. I’ll see you soon.”

He watches her go.

//  
  


“Oh my god,” Nino gasps for breath through the tears and the mirth, some half a week later, and Adrien glares at him. “Oh my god, that’s too good. Chloe declared that you were her _boyfriend?_ In front of the whole  _newscast_ crew?”

“Why is my suffering so amusing to you?”

“Bro, have you forgotten who had a near-death experience just a few short weeks ago?”

 _Not a chance_ , Adrien bites his tongue, overcome by the same swooping sensation of annoyance that hit him a few days ago on the rooftop, when Ladybug dropped in—closed off, systematic, efficient, professional, distant. Honest.

He’s starting to get really sick and tired of hearing about this stupid elevator.

“Near-death?” Adrien echoes, because Nino is still being playful, still teasing, still unaware of just how impactful his being stuck in the elevator with Ladybug really was—Nino's still joking.

“Because I have _not_ ,” Nino clicks his tongue. “Can’t seem to shake any of the damn akumas these days, eh? At least I wasn’t akumatized again... Anyway, I hope you can appreciate the freshness of my trauma. It required many danishes for recovery, you know. In fact—how many danishes do you think _your_ current dilemma would require? Twelve? Twenty? Mine was at least fourteen, so we should really see Marinette about your present situation.”

“Okay, okay,” Adrien deadpans, and when he pushes his smile forward, it actually feels cheeky enough. It's a nice feeling. And—okay, so maybe Nino and Marinette aren’t as… _close_ , as he’d thought they are. Maybe not _that_ way. Maybe they’re just becoming better friends—like Marinette and Chat are.

 _Must be nice,_ Adrien thinks, and almost startles at his own bitterness. He takes a deep breath—tries not to think about just how little he’d slept the night before.

This needs to stop.

“All right,” he repeats, and hopes that maybe one of these grins will start to feel more natural, more true. “You’ve made your point. Bring on the danishes.”

“Yeah? How many, you think? How bad was it?”

Adrien considers this.

(Plagg has started to shift inside his bag, probably incorporating some measure of _pastries_ into his little dream, given the turn this conversation has taken.) (Adrien swears, if he has to explain away _one more time_ why he’s suddenly cried out, out of nowhere, because a pair of tiny little clawed paws suddenly sinks into his thigh just because the little furball had a dream about _cheese—_ )

“Hm,” Adrien decides. “Maybe at least sixteen.”

Nino is clearly loving this game—the enthusiasm is actually pretty contagious; Adrien tries not to let it be too dampened by the realization that he’ll probably be consuming these pretend-recovery danishes as _Adrien_ instead of Chat Noir, for whom there are two completely and totally different danish-eating experiences. Adrien can’t entirely withhold a sigh.

“Okay, okay, _good_ ,” Nino is saying, “Sixteen is totally a respectable medicinal number, because that boyfriend shit’s almost as funny as the fact that Marinette actually believes she owns a pair of lucky socks.”

Adrien lists his head. “That’s funny?”

Nino briefly hesitates, like he’s replaying those words back over in his head.

“Yeah, man,” he continues to laugh, but it has a sensation to it that Adrien can’t place. “Isn’t it?”

//

It is wholly unsurprising, when Adrien decides that he should probably ask Marinette, himself.

It's this reason—and a hundred others—why,  
that night, Chat Noir decides to visit her balcony.

For the danishes.

Of course.

///

 

 

 **part [** ⅔ **]**


	3. smalltalk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit, this is hard. 
> 
> How the hell did Marinette _do_ this by herself for so long?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _3/21/17_. two chapter updates tonight!! unbeta'd for now, so please let me know if you find any glaring errors! :) thanks! ♡
> 
> p.s. this story has taken on a life of its own. this is now clearly more than three chapters long, but we're already halfway to the end! thanks for all the love and encouragement! i love reading everyone's comments. i will try to answer them all this week! ♡♡♡
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)

 

//

 

Right. Danishes: Chat Noir further decides to wait until after the nightly patrol. _Tonight_ becomes _later_ becomes _soon._

But for now, the Miraculous Duo stands atop a sloping rooftop, balanced upon a thin seam, surrounded by the glow of the city and the faint moonlight hidden by the thick clouds. The whole sky looks morose, but so far Chat has been able to pretend otherwise.

Until:

“Do you ever wonder why Hawkmoth wants the power of the Miraculous so badly?” Ladybug asks him.

It’s a rather deep question, especially since he can feel how close they are to winding down; there’s no sign of trouble on this fine Parisian evening, and Chat Noir is actually eager to wrap up for once.

He glances curiously at Ladybug. Their conversations have been almost exclusively about akumas tonight: has this question really been weighing so much on her mind? Does _she_ have a theory? He breathes in— _Ladybug... what do you want me to say?_ —sighs out, “Probably the same reason any evil supervillian wants ultimate power. Wants to take over the world and all that jazz. He could be bored. Or a maniac. He could have a ton of reasons.”

“Yes… but…” she trails off, piecing her thoughts together, and he can feel her watching him as he twirls his baton in his grip, as he returns it to the holster with a click. “Yes, but someone—I _overheard_ someone the other day, ask, ‘What is that akuma’s problem?’ And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.”

Chat glances at the position of the moon in the sky. It’s getting pretty late. He tries not to fidget too much, but the agitation burns through his limbs anyway. Still, Chat knows where his responsibility lies, and it sound like Ladybug is winding up. He tries to follow.

“All right…?”

“Well, I wrote it off at first, because it seemed like an obvious question with a pretty consistent answer, right? The akuma is created through a personal problem: the key to defeating the akuma is finding that problem. It’s—have you ever thought about it like this before?”

Her voice cuts off, so Chat turns to her. _Her eyes are so far away, yet so focused._ She looks like she expects him to respond, to already know _where_ she is going with this, and he thinks he's got a hunch, maybe, but apparently his mere attention is answer enough for now.

“I hadn’t, before someone made that comment," she says, "and now I can’t get it out of my head. Chat… what is _Hawkmoth’s_ problem?”

“What are you saying?” Chat shifts. “That we should treat Hawkmoth like an akuma?”

“I’m saying that we should treat Hawkmoth like the _ultimate_ akuma,” Ladybug breathes.

Whether she realizes it or not, her passion for her theory moves her feet forward, brings her shadowy figure light years closer to where he stands. They’re so close that he needs to actually tilt his head down to lock their gazes, so close that he can see every lightning-fast fleck of realization erupting in her bright blue eyes.

“I’m saying that all this time we have been looking for a lair _,_ for the _villain_ who is Hawkmoth, when really—do we know the first thing about him? The man behind his mask? What does he want?”

Chat Noir is pretty sick and tired of thinking about masks, to be honest.

“We know what he wants,” Chat shrugs, but it feels robotic, automatic. “He wants the Miraculous.”

“But why?” she insists. “What is _his_ problem? What does he want them for? And what are we planning to do, when we find him? Are we just—gonna fight him? No grand plan?"

Chat Noir can’t explain the defensiveness rising up. The truth is, he’s not quite prepared to face this possibility yet: these questions sing of _final battle_ and _ultimate_ and _that’s it, cat-boy, you’ve done your duty—_

 _You can go back to your old life, now_.

“Maybe,” he argues, and it’s threaded with such a complex web of emotion that he doesn’t blame her, when Ladybug recoils at the indifference that rolls off his tongue. Her expression shifts—it turns into something more contemplative, which irritates him, and more cautious, which pleases a small, vindictive part of him that Chat Noir didn’t even realize he had.

“We could _try_ ,” she replies, and it’s got an edge to it now, “but what good will we be if that doesn’t work? It’s not always about fighting the figurehead, Chat. Shouldn’t we have learned by now that things are always more than what they seem?” She’s annoyed with him.

Good.

He almost likes it. It actually almost feels better, somehow, snapping at each other over akumas rather than continuing to parade on with the rest of this stiff, awkward evening. For the last two hours, they’ve acted like _—what—_ mere business partners out on an obligatory perimeter check? (They don’t even _need_ these patrols, do they?) It’s not like they ever find anything. Akumas are by and large created during Paris’ waking hours.

( _What’s the point of this?_ his heart beats too fast, too jarring—it catches in his throat.)

Chat Noir used to jump out of bed come strike of ten so that he could race to his Lady’s designated rooftop, just so he could feel the wind cry out as he tore through the skyline, as he felt the warmth of having Ladybug sprint and swing in tandem. Only one of these things is truly enjoyable, at the moment. He knows she could say the same, so, honestly—why do they keep this going? 

(He knows.)

 _You were so quick to back off before,_ Chat can’t help but think, as they stare each other down, as uncharted energy rolls off them in waves, as electricity surges through his veins, as it tingles his fingertips and ignites the flush beneath Ladybug’s mask. _You were so ready to fade out a week ago,_ he can’t help it, he can’t— _Are you surprised that it’s actually happening, now?_

The realization strikes through him harder than any of the others before it. There’s an actual lump in his throat. Adrien hates this.

“Maybe you don’t always get to know people’s reasons for everything,” is what he says, gaze bearing down; he hopes she feels it—how heavy it is. “We still have to do our job anyway. Right?”

The firm line of her mouth softens, falls apart. He knows she understands.

He almost kisses her.

“I have to head back,” is what fills the space instead, and then he turns on his heel; it’s a sign, he thinks, when he _breathes_ and the suffocating press of the urge to cry actually eases up. In the span of four strides along the peak of the rooftop, he’s managed to retrieve and extend his baton, started to feel like he’s not going to pass out from lack of air. There’s a beat of hesitation before his jump, which he doesn’t recognize the cause of until he doesn’t hear her call out his name.

Chat sets his jaw, and kicks off. Four rooftops later, when he allows himself to glance out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Ladybug is still there, lingering.

He feels like he’s going to be sick.

 

//

 

Which is why it takes him the better part of an hour, and then some, before he feels like he can actually consider doing what he’s been looking forward to doing all evening; one fight with Ladybug isn’t going to change his mind, okay? Not even if it’s a really awful fight.

One truly horrendous, monumental, stomach-churning fight.

Chat Noir rises from his wayward, exhausted slouch against the beam of the Eiffel Tower, and shakes some life back into his joints. He can do this. He can totally do this. (Granted, he is the furthest feeling in the world from wanting... a goddamn danish, but he can _do_ this.) He would like to see his plans through _—_ regarding the danishes. He’d really like it, he thinks, if he could get to the bottom of what’s… going on, with the one who helps bake them.

But Adrien deliberates: he's really not in a right state of mind to occupy Chat’s persona as well as he should; does _Marinette_ , of all people, deserve to see Chat so low? To have him thrust his melodrama upon her? Not one bit.

He’s already worked himself through so many of the reasons why he shouldn’t visit Marinette tonight that he’s actually headed back to the manor—determined to try again when the world is a little less wrong—but then he catches himself thinking the following thought: _It’s a damn wonder I’m not glowing out some magenta-colored goggles right now._

And he turns directions completely, mid-leap, which results in a semi-nasty collision with an unexpected weathervane, but then he’s off, no reluctance whatsoever, in the name of a familiar bakery.

//

Chat Noir likes to catch people’s attention: it’s part of the reason why he throws out so many throw-away lines, takes so much of his well-bred charm and tries to multiply it tenfold, tosses sweet words and debonair looks and carefree swishes of his tail with abandon. He feeds off the reaction, the _recognition_ , the reassurance that, _yes_ , they’ve noticed him, this ridiculously charismatic and surefooted creature in a black supernatural suit. It’s attention and anticipation, and he fights for it in every cheesy line, in every wild pun, in every single breath of _Ladybug, what do you think? —of me?_

So when Chat Noir lands at Marinette’s side window, he’s more than disappointed to see that she’s fast asleep.

As she should be.

(In fact… the room is so still and so dark and so _silent_ that it’s a wonder she’s even inside?  
  
Chat’s impeccable hearing is capable of many things:  
it make the question of Alya’s voice-recognition hypothesis all the more interesting,  
makes him accustomed to details that no other human might ever have the chance to know.

By all accounts, Marinette’s room seems completely empty, almost devoid of any—)

Marinette’s face appears in the window, and Chat recoils from the shock so violently that he nearly falls from his perch on the window ledge. When he regains control of his breathing again, his ears are still ringing from the sharp, choked yelp that’s barely allowed to pass through Marinette’s clutching fingers.

She freaks out.

 _Chat!_ he can hear her frantic hiss. Her eyes are wide with shock and alarm. He takes the moment as an opportunity to remind them both of who he _is_ and he reveals his most uncanny, accurate cheshire grin; he hopes he looks as rogue as her shock is making him feel.

Despite the slight glare of the window from the lights of the city beyond, Chat can clearly see Marinette’s hand grip onto the railing of the staircase that leads up to her bed in the loft, but she’s also gesturing something. It takes him a moment to realize that he’s just watching her, instead of actually interpreting.

 _Go upstairs!_ she’s commanding him, repeatedly. _To the balcony!_  With a curl of a grin that means to say that he’s merely been waiting for her invitation all along, Chat gives a two-finger salute, and rises to the roof.

Because it pleases him to do so, Chat makes a point of following her instructions _so_ well that he is actually lounging quite comfortably on her little recliner by the time the trap door opens, and she blinks at him in the darkness of a nighttime Paris because, yes, it is nearly midnight and he _is_ in fact on her balcony. He’s never seen her look so surprised in his life and—she’s not exactly displeased to see him, he thinks—just suffering from complete, unadulterated shock. It’s a gratifying feeling, at the moment. Chat Noir likes to catch people’s attention.

Which is why he’s watching quite closely, when he tilts a warm nod to his head, looks her in the wide-shocked eyes, and offers her, “ _Princess_.”

For a long moment, neither of them move.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, voice so quiet and brittle it’s a wonder it doesn’t break. Chat’s statuesque resolve begins to crack. “Are you all right?”

 _Shit—_ he is clearly not doing a good enough job of keeping his evening’s dilemma under wraps. Best to play it cool. Or is it play dumb? He’ll figure it out later. “Have I ever needed a reason to visit you before?”

His lighthearted words to little to convince her.

“You haven’t visited this late before,” she points out, slowly, like she’s waiting for the truth to slap her in the face. “Not unless there was an akuma involved. Did something happen?” Her gaze flits back and forth between his eyes. It’s a little unnerving, just how deeply she seems to be digging into him. For all the time the he spends turning up randomly on her walks home ( _or sitting beside her at her family’s living room coffee table_ ), he’s not used to Marinette looking him so fiercely in the eye.

“As a matter of fact,” Chat tries to grin, but it’s too tight, he can feel it in the pinch of his mask. Marinette looks at him with such _concern_ , he almost forgets to play the part, almost forgets what he came here for in the first place. “Rumor has it that you carry a bit of a lucky charm with you, and as my own lucky partner has turned in for the evening, I’m a little bit in need.”

It must be the moonlight: Marinette’s eyes close with her breath, and in the twitch-shut of her eyelids, her face contracts with something akin to pain. It reminds Adrien, just a little bit, of the kind of sympathy-pain you feel when someone tells you that they’ve lost a pet, or a friend— _or a mother_.

He’s about to reach out to her, throat closing up, when she shakes her head so violently her hair whips into her face (which is—which is down; oh, wow, that’s _new_ ) and then she’s staring back at Chat, eyes blazing, and _this:_

This is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Class President and anti-bully extraordinaire. This is take-no-nonsense, call-people-out-on-their-bad-behaviors, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-invite-the-crazy-black-cat- _in_ , always-lends-a-listening-ear-and-a-thoughtful-smile Marinette.

The one that doesn’t talk to Adrien.

"I'm afraid I'm fresh out of lucky charms," she sighs, with a touch of exasperation and a taste of humor he can only begin to guess. "I gave mine away some time ago, and I haven't gotten it back yet."

"You're... not talking about the socks, are you?"

"What?" Marinette darkens her brow. "How do you know about those?"

But Chat doesn't answer her, because—

Shit. _He_ has her lucky charm.

Adrien does.

_Shit—_

He remembers where it is, as soon as it comes to mind.

(It’s by his bed.  
  
Why hasn't he returned it? Why hasn't he used it?  
It's just been hanging there above the headboard, stagnant, like a metaphor.  
He doesn't want to give it back.  
Right now, he can pretend that Marinette thinks he's  
nice enough for her to let him borrow some of her luck—not the rich, famous  
jerk who was caught messing with the gum on her seat.

If he gives it back, then how will he remember she once cared enough to—)

“Chat, stinkin’, Noir,” she grits out, and the glare is so intense that it’s a wonder it doesn’t knock him over, “it is almost one a.m. You came to my window in the middle of the night—you did not come here to just _chat_. What is up?”

Interestingly enough, that’s exactly why he’s come.

Well. Mostly.

Chat allows himself to look the tiniest bit sheepish. Heartfelt apology isn’t exactly Chat Noir’s style, but…

“I actually did mean to come earlier,” he admits. “If it’s any help. But, uh… saving Paris does occasionally come with its… unexpected challenges.”

Marinette is gaping at him so openly. It gives him a moment to realize just how unusual it is, for him to stop by _so_ late. Marinette is in her pajamas.

 _Don’t let this get awkward,_ his brain panics. _Don’t let this get awkward. You’re Chat. You’re Chat Noir. Be smooth. Make a pun. Say something._

If awkwardness has crept in yet, Marinette seems totally unaware of it, or is fully prepared to ignore it. She strides closer to him, like physical proximity might allow her to look inside his brain. “You were… planning to visit? Earlier?” she phrases carefully. The gap in her words causes Chat to forget the pressing social faux pas for the moment. She’s asking him for confirmation, of something a little deeper than what her words are presenting.

“That’s been the idea,” Chat reveals half his grin. “I figured this afternoon I’d come by.”

“When the bakery was open?”

Her genuine confusion actually sparks a chuckle out of his chest. He’s amazed by how easy it comes, how light it feels. Apparently—so is she.

“No,” he’s still laughing at her, a little bit. “I meant—I _decided_ this afternoon, to visit. I expected the bakery would be closed. I didn’t come for the danishes. Well. Not _just_ for the danishes.”

Marinette stares at him. Her head cocks to the side. “What if there aren’t any danishes left?”

“Rumor has it that there are _always_ danishes left.”

Her brow quirks ever higher. “Oh? And who might’ve told you that?”

 _Nino_ , Adrien thinks, but maybe he’s making that up in his head. Maybe he’s getting his stories confused. At any rate, he’s not saying any of this because it’s _true_ —he’s saying this stuff because he wants to keep Marinette talking. “You live in a bakery, Princess. It’s not such a wild assumption, no?”

“I live _above_ a bakery, thank you,” she corrects, though she doesn’t seem too hung up on it. She seems relatively preoccupied by the fact that they’re both standing in the dark. _Can she see me?_ he wonders. He can see her perfectly clearly—what does she see, when she looks at him?

“Do you really want a danish?” she asks. He’s about to quip back, but she follows it with, “Will it make you feel better?”

Chat gapes. “There is nothing wrong with the way I—“

Marinette’s sigh blows into him, like a gust of actual wind. Her glare stops his fail of an argument in its tracks. “Don’t move,” she commands, and then she’s lifting up the trap door, and disappearing to the floor below.

Chat Noir is alone in Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s room.

Generally speaking, he’s not above snooping, but… he doesn’t want to think of this casual curiosity that way. Marinette invited him in; she’s aware that he’s here; this is fine.

Chat Noir strolls around her room, trying to lend an air of leisure to the swish of his tail. He ignores the heavy staccato in his ribcage. Marinette’s room has changed slightly, since the last time Adrien was inside it. There’s traces of school, of fashion, of living in a bakery, and of Alya, of course, as per usual, but…

Now there's traces of Nino, too.

Adrien sees them because he knows what to look for: the wrappers to Nino’s favorite candy are in the trash, and there's a small half-eaten bag of the snack-size bars on her desk next to her computer. Nino’s spare earbud headphones are hanging haphazardly off one pointed ear of the tiny cat head plushie that sits on Marinette’s desk; the one whose grin looks uncannily familiar; the one that had made Adrien laugh to himself when he’d come over to practice for the _Ultimate Mecha Strike III_ tournament.

Chat isn’t really laughing now.

There’s other things, too: he catches sight of the comic book Alya was reading last week, which is sitting on top of the small shelf by Marinette’s lamp. Atop the cover is a stray little post-it with Alya’s distinctive handwriting: _read me!!_ Not too far away, there’s a talented, intriguing, albeit hasty little doodle of Marinette’s pensive, smiling profile on a small corner-scrap of notepaper, taped to the wall behind her lamp, signed by Nathaniel. There’s a miniature plastic bottle of bubbles sitting at the base of the lamp, clearly Nino’s, that has another post-it note stuck to it, with Nino’s messy _just in case!_ _ha ha!!_ written on it.

It takes a moment to realize that he’s staring at some mysterious inside joke. He reads the line four times; understanding never hits, but Adrien can still feel the punch.

Chat Noir huffs. “ _Terrible pun_ ,” he mutters to himself, and turns away from her desk.

Adrien purposefully doesn’t pay these little treasures any more attention than he does the rest of the room.

Marinette's space is clean, and her walls are relatively bare. There's a spread from his father's latest published designs on the wall above her workspace, but the rest of the walls look like an open canvas. It feels like a fresh start.

“So we are, in fact, out of danishes,” she announces, and Chat jumps so fiercely that it’s actually embarrassing. (He’s not doing anything _wrong_. There’s no reason to feel like he’s been caught red-handed. Why the hell didn’t his cat-senses _hear_ her?) “But I do have some cookies, if you want.”

It occurs to him: Chat Noir showed up outside Marinette’s window, on a school night, at half-past midnight, entered her room and interrupted her sleep, just so he could make her dig up the leftovers from her family’s bakery in her pajamas while he stood around in her room and contemplated her things. 

“Thank you,” Chat says, but it doesn’t feel right out loud, so he changes it to, “I’m sorry.”

He’s not sure what the hell he’s revealing on his face, but Marinette looks so _impacted_ that the guilt of it all eats away at his chest. Her whole frame softens so much she almost drops the small plate of cookies she’s holding—she catches them at the last second, which is extremely lucky, because Chat Noir’s reflexes are in no state to have leapt across the room to have rescued them, and the only thing that could make him feel more awful than waking up Marinette with his pity party and making her find him cookies in the middle of the night was if he’d done all that and then made her drop them.

He’s still contemplating the possibilities of how awful this situation is— _so_ destructive _, you are_ —when he vaguely registers that Marinette is setting the unharmed plate down on her desk with _certainty_ , and then she’s walking towards him with _purpose_ , and he’s still not prepared for it, not even when she steps inside his space and buries her face in his chest and wraps her arms around his middle.

“I don’t know if there’s really anything I can do to fix whatever’s bothering you,” he hears, but it’s muffled, because the blood pounding in his ears is deafening, “I’m just Marinette. But,” she inhales, because his claws have found her shoulder blades, what does she _mean_ she’s ‘ _just_ ’ Marinette, “but I’m glad you came.”

Chat Noir, for once, doesn’t know what to say.

He just hugs her back.

  
//

 

The next morning, amidst the chaos of too many emotions he is not currently able to deal with, Adrien decides that today, especially, he will be _nice_.

Usually, Adrien is unfailingly polite; painstakingly patient; persistently cordial. He moves and breathes with the courteous sort of grace that’s been so deeply ingrained in him since before he could even talk, as soon as he was old enough to be aware that he was in front of a camera. Adrien knows that he is self-aware in many ways that most people his age probably aren’t, which is great for representing a fashion empire, and often helpful for mediating tricky situations…

Not so great for making friends with his peers.

(Adrien knows he carries himself differently: most teenagers his age are probably most certainly _as_ aware of their bodies as he is of _his_ , but most teenagers probably aren’t as acutely aware of how to move their bodies in ways that catch the best light, provide the best angles, catch the most attention; how to draw the viewer’s eye to imaginary targets inside a photograph frame like _he’s_ the one directing their gaze himself, evoking a feeling or a thought by altering the minutiae of something as simple and impactful as increasing the shadows along his jaw, as quirking the smallest tilt to one eyebrow; how to maximize the energy his body generates, how to create a certain line or curve of his silhouette inside a shot, how to smile without showing teeth, ( _how to leap across forty-foot canyons between rooftops at blinding speeds_ ), how to walk and talk and breathe and move like he’s always one second away from a photoshoot, how to be an actor _as_ a model (how to be an actor as a _superhero_ ), how to _act_ , how to _be_ , how to make it seem as though he so seamlessly lives up to every single one of his father’s everest standards that, sometimes—

It hits Adrien, just how little he knows how to just be himself.)  
  


//

 

Wait, no. He isn’t supposed to be feeling down right now. He has school in ten minutes.

Adrien huffs out a scrap of air so loudly in the back of the car that Nathalie actually glances over her shoulder at him. He pretends not to notice, but then he worries that she might assume he’s too stressed, and report it back to his father somehow?

 _No, no,_  he tells himself.  Nathalie has been really great about playing the messenger from public school-day number one ; he shouldn’t just start assuming the worst _now_. He is going to stop feeling sorry for himself and remember the plan.

Yes. Adrien is going to be nice today.

 _Friendly_. Approachable. Engaging.

Not just polite or cordial or considerate or distantly-attentive, like usual. He will not merely be a matter of _courteous_ , when spoken to; he will not be just another _polite smile_ when someone looks his way and then walks on past—toward their close childhood friends or classmates, people who have shared their whole lives together. He will be actively present. He will be overtly friendly. He is going to start acting like he actually _fits_ into this life, that he’s as woven into this tight-knit group as they claim he is, because, that way, maybe then, he will start to feel like it’s true.

 

//  


Adrien’s chest tightens, with memory: _starting_ —  
_with Marinette._  


//

 

Nino spots Adrien’s car pull up to the curb outside the school grounds, so he waves him over, wide and warm and open, as if to say ‘ _hurry up!’_ when, really—

Nino could actually use a few more minutes with Marinette alone.

“It’s been a few days since a new akuma,” he’s trying to be quiet, to be sneaky, but also trying to avoid drawing attention to the fact that they _are_ being sneaky. To drive this point home, he purposefully kicks at an imaginary pebble on the ground at their feet: _Just another bored teenager dreading the start of a school day, nothing to see here._ No one’s even paying them attention, but Nino isn’t about to let himself get _complacent._ Besides. Marinette is really out of it this morning, and he’s trying to get to the bottom of it. “Are you worried that it’s been too long?”

“No,” she answers immediately, which is nice to hear, because to be honest—Nino kinda was. “Although… akumas _have_ been on my mind recently…”

“Wow. Shocker.”

“Oh, hush,” she sighs, and—holy cannoli. She is so tired today? More so than usual? _Did I pack enough chocolate?_

“Did you sleep okay?” Nino asks, and this time he doesn’t try to hide his concern under a pebble-kick, or some equally ridiculous ruse. Friends ask each other this. Or, at least—they should. “What time did you go to bed?”

“I… am not sure.”

“Whoah,” Nino feels his eyebrows raise high above the rims of his glasses. “Class Prez, livin’ on the wild side.”

Marinette tries to scoff, but instead it comes out closer to a whimper. Nino’s curiosity zeroes in like a laser. "First of all, don't call me 'Prez'. Second... wild?" Marinette sighs. "Unfortunately? That’s... probably not as off-base as you think…”

Nino’s brain is just a series of _!!!!!!!!!_ but the world hates him today, because before he can dig the answers out of Marinette about her quote-unquote _‘wild’_ evening, Adrien reaches them from across the yard. “Good morning!” Adrien greets, bright and cheerful.

But Nino watches his expression dip when he catches sight of the burning, frustrated curiosity so horribly _not_ -hidden on Nino’s face; watches Adrien blink twice at Marinette, who is so distracted by whatever’s on her mind that she’s actually able to look Adrien in the eye, no problem, murmur a clear “Hello,” and then return to contemplating the nearby staircase with excruciating focus.

Adrien is clearly unsure how to proceed, and Nino wishes he could activate his acceptance of ‘Having to _Wait_ Patiently for Marinette’s Insider-Tales like a Peasant’ as smoothly as if he were flipping a switch. Nino may be dying for _deets_ , but Storytelling and Alibis and Covers and Acting Normal™ is supposed to be his job now, right?

He pulls himself together.

“Hey, man,” Nino reaches out for a solid fist bump. Adrien returns it without hesitation. “Ready for another day?”

“As ever,” Adrien replies, and Nino is about to say something else, about to fill up the space with another branch of kickstarter conversation, when Adrien turns to the third member of their party and says, “Hey, Marinette.”

This time, when she turns to him, she actually _connects_ the dots, so Nino has a front seat to the expression on Marinette’s face when she actually registers the surprise of who is looking at her, expecting a response.

Nino decides he has definitely not packed enough chocolate.

Marinette might have said _hello_ back, if given enough time, but Adrien doesn’t wait. “Did you catch the announcement of the release date for the new spring line?” Adrien asks her, and Nino has absolutely no clue what the hell they’re talking about, until, _oh_ , right, Adrien’s _dad_ — “I’m not allowed to reveal anything, but I just want to say that I feel like it’s right up your alley.”

Nino turns to Marinette, unable to contain his surprise. Sure, he knows fashion and design is a huge part of Marinette’s interests—it’s been that way for as long as he can remember—and Nino likes to look cool as much as the next guy—(well, okay, maybe not, because the _next_ guy is Adrien Agreste, okay but, whatever)—the point is: he really doesn’t have much background in fashion and stuff. The two most important accessories he owns are his headphones and his hat and, as far as he knows, Marinette has only designed one of those, _once_. He’s curious to see what she thinks.

“Oh my god,” she breathes, clearly mid-revelation. Her eyes are all wide and shocked and flabbergasted. “ _No!_ No, I totally… I didn’t even realize… is it already so _soon?_ ”

“Yeah,” Adrien runs a hand through the back of his hair awkwardly. “It… snuck up on me, too.”

Marinette’s face is registering all sorts of shades of shocked, but Nino can read them pretty clearly now: _When did time start flying by so quickly? How could I have forgotten? What else have I missed?_ _What will I lose track of next?_

Nino bites the inside of his cheek.

“It’s… uh, next Friday,” is what Adrien says, when Marinette is too lost in her stampede of thoughts to propel the conversation any further forward. She glances up at Adrien at this, but her expression goes from twenty-percent stress to seventy-percent stress in the span of a single blink, and Adrien is starting to look like he’s actually regretting broaching the subject at all. But on he goes: “I’m only working the commercial shoots this year, because of the timing with exams, but I’ll still be supporting most of the Fashion Week runways from the audience.”

Is… Adrien actually talking about his work? His _dad_? His modeling?

Nino tilts his head towards Adrien, unable to hide his surprise completely. Adrien hates talking about this stuff. Right?

“Oh, wow,” Marinette breathes. Even when framed by all the stress, Nino can still see the actual sparkles of heart-eyes-emojis in Marinette’s gaze over that. “ _Amazing!_ ”

Nino quickly looks between them, not entirely sure what is happening: are they... having an actual conversation? About a shared... interest? The two of them?

“Yeah!” Adrien says suddenly, like he hadn’t been expecting the word to come out so loud, or so quick, and, “I know it’s kind of short notice, but would—“

“You _guys!”_ Alya’s voice comes out of nowhere, from behind the giant stone wall framing the steps, and Nino and Marinette _both_ jump—which, in his opinion, is the most incriminating shit they’ve done all the week. (Who the hell acts so jumpy? No one!) Not unless they’ve got a reason to _be_ jumpy, quick, man, _kick a pebble or something_ —

“You are never gonna _believe_ what I found!” Alya declares, eyes glinting with knowledge and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes Nino equal parts nervous and _very_ nervous, but for different reasons. “I used the video clips from the most recent newscast report that Ladybug gave, which, believe it or not, is actually still the Elevator Incident—that girl has been avoiding the press like the _plague_ —and even when I tried to cross-reference the sound bytes with the public recording system samples—”

“You _what_?”

“—I couldn’t even get a _reading_ ! It’s like her sound clips don’t even exist! I can see the file, but when you try to process them, the machine goes _kaput_ , nada, nothin’. This is like, some serious Grade A superhero magic we are dealing with here!“

Marinette and Alya lead the way into the school building, giggling all the while about supernatural powers interacting with social media, and Nino and Adrien fall behind, closing their small pack into a tight-knit square. Nino sorta wants to ask Adrien why he’s all gung-ho about the Fashion Week suddenly. Or—has he always been, and Nino has just never noticed? _No way._  Adrien makes a point of avoiding any and all talk of his celebrity status as much as humanly possible. The kid always goes stark white at the merest, meekest whisper of a fan asking, ‘ _Autograph?’_ and then pastes on his ‘Fashion Empire Heir’ smile faster than you can blink.

So what gives? Is it just because he knows Marinette is so interested? But _she’s_ always been interested in fashion, and especially his father’s work, so… why now?

Nino frowns as he thinks belatedly about the fact that Adrien got interrupted.

“Anyway, I think this totally means Ladybug and Chat Noir are in the clear. You think there’s some way I can send them this message?” Alya’s eyes widen, and her voice drops to almost nothing. She completely stops walking, like the shock of such a possibility is just that great. Nino laughs at her, but at her cue, they spontaneously and wordlessly form an impromptu pseudo-huddle, a tight pack of bodies here in the second floor hallway, around the corner from the homeroom. Nino is about to lay down a joke about it when, “Wait a minute—Nino! _You_ can totally pass this onto Ladybug!”

His heart drops.

“What?” he pales, stomach tight. “Me?”

Marinette echoes his shock. “Nino?” Her eyes flit to his profile; he makes every fiber of every muscle _refuse_ to look at her. “Why not you, Alya? You’re the administrator of the Ladyblog!”

“Yeah, but Ladybug has actually _hung_ with Nino,” Alya reasons, and quips, “ _Lucky_.” He means to retaliate, but all he gets for his trouble is a wayward noise and a relatively painful grimace of speechlessness, and then Alya drops even quieter: “No, nononono, being kidnapped is definitely not a good premise for some quality bonding time, believe me, I _know_ —but I bet she def left some means of communication for you, right?”

Nino is gaping. Floundering. He can almost _see_ Marinette’s jaw dropping, out of the corner of his eye. Alya’s determination is brutal.

“I mean—just in case, since you’re at such a higher risk. You’re definitely a bigger target now, right? I’m sure she wouldn’t leave you without some sort of contact point? For emergencies.”

He can feel three sets of gazes burning into him, but he focuses on Alya’s only: “Uh… yeah,” he answers, almost meek. “You… might… say that…”

“Ha! I _knew_ it!” Alya pumps her fist as subtly as she can which, is to say—ain’t subtle—but there’s not much that can be done at this point, because Alya has tasted Victory, her journalistic intuition has been proved _true_ , and sometimes the confirmation of a hunch is just the fuel she needs. “Is it with the fancy cell phone-like device she uses sometimes? Wait, no, don’t answer me—better not answer say much more here at school, anyway—just know that _we_ know that you’re protected, and know that _I_ expect that you will share my discovery with Ladybug at your earliest convenience.”

Nino will _not_ , under any circumstances, look at Marinette.

He barely even breathes. “Got it,” he nods, one single time, and feels his face flush hot when Alya winks at him. Overtly. _Oh, man_.

Nino can totally feel Marinette laughing beside him as they enter the classroom, as they make their way into their seats. Alya is already caught up with saying something to Kim in the seats up above, which is probably the only reason Marinette dares any sort of comment at all.

“ _Subtle_ ,” she laughs at him beneath her breath as she passes him by. He sends a glare back at her so fiercely it’s a wonder his hat doesn’t go flying off his head.

 _Thanks for nothing_ , he mouthes back at her, all the more determined than ever to get to the bottom of _her_ excitement, but also pleased that she at least seems to be in a better mood.

He turns back to face the front of classroom, feeling a little better about the day—until his gaze catches sight of Adrien’s profile.

Adrien looks only straight ahead.  


//  


Nino may not be a mind-reader, but…  
It feels like a pretty awkward lesson.  


//  


But by lunchtime, whatever was bothering Adrien seems to have vanished; conversely, in the span of a single biology lesson, Marinette seems to have sunk even further into distraction.

Come _on_ , people.

“So,” Nino begins, like a declaration. “Where to? The park? How we feelin’ about a picnic?”

Alya is game, Adrien is game, _Marinette_ has to run home ‘real quick’.

“I’ll be back before it’s time to head back to class,” she promises, like that makes the situation any less about her practically _running away_ from spilling the beans to him, and Nino gives her a sour _I-don’t-buy-this-nonsense_ look with all the admonition he can muster, which—he’d like to think is a lot.

But this leaves Nino to chill with Alya and Adrien in the meantime, while they commandeer a nice, clear grassy patch in the nearest park. It definitely doesn’t feel like a third-wheel situation, and Nino knows it still wouldn’t even if Adrien _did_ happen to ask if he and Alya were, like, together. But the situation is still awkward for reasons he can’t describe.

“I was thinking about the sound clips,” Alya announces, her half-finished sandwich held aloft between both hands. “It still doesn’t sit right with me, only using recordings made by the media… I’d really like to get my hands a recording of my own, just to be sure.”

Adrien just took a bite out of his apple, but once he swallows it down, he asks, “Why don’t you?”

“I’ve _tried_ ,” Alya sighs, as her head tilts back and her sandwich drops into the bandana laid over her lap. “I can just never get a hold of Ladybug—she’s always gone so fast!”

Nino munches on potato chips. Adrien goes back to eating his apple. Nino is pretty sure he sees Adrien shrug.

“Why not go after Chat Noir?” Nino suggests. “Unless you think the Creation and Destruction powers interact differently with that sort of thing?”

Alya and Adrien both freeze. They stare at him.

“What! Isn’t that a thing?” Seriously, this _is_ supposed to be common knowledge, right? This isn’t weird! “Chat’s powers are, like, destructive. So maybe they’re more prone to scrambling the feed than Ladybug’s would be?”

Alya taps a finger to her lips. The sandwich is forgotten. “I wonder… but if Ladybug holds the physical manifestation of _luck_ , then wouldn’t that be just as powerful a tool for scraping out of an awful situation?”

“Yeah, but the luck is limited, you know? She’s only allowed to use Lucky Charm once per battle, really, and then she’s on her own. Maybe that would factor in? Whereas, even though Chat’s also got the ‘one-shiny-attack-per-boss-fight’ limit too, the whole nature of what power he embodies is like, totally different. I almost think Chat would have more of an advantage in this situation, if the type of power ends up being a factor in how the magic disentangles the feed and—what!?”

“Holy _cow_ ,” says Alya, and looks exactly the way she looks right before she’s about to kiss the hell out of him, which is, like, _not_ a problem at all, just for the record, not even a little, but _Adrien_ —

“I dunno,” Nino brushes it off, and thereby breaks the spell of whatever had come over them, and he hopes to high-fucking-Lucky-Charms that he does not look as embarrassingly okay with almost making out in a park on a school lunch break in front of _Adrien_ as he feels he was, for two-point-five-seconds. Maybe five seconds.

(He thinks, in Alya’s general direction, sending brain waves and telepathic promises: _later, later, later, later, please, later, later, later, later, later_ —)

“Look, I don’t know the details of this stuff, all right? I only know what little I know from our incidental chat in the elevator. I am just tossing a whole bunch of words out in the park over a bag of potato chips, okay? Either way, it sounds like you could still use a soundcheck with Ladybug.”

“Yeah, but now I _definitely_ need sound bytes from them both! Nino, you’re a damn genius. Also, what in the hell are you eating? Take some of my sandwich.”

Now that the embarrassment has decreased considerably, Nino chances a look at Adrien, who is eating his lunch rather quietly. For some reason, Nino’s stomach flops.

“Hey,” he says, mouth half-full, because he’s certain that something needs to be said _now_ ; he’s not sure what it is, but he’s pretty sure it can’t wait. Swallows down his food. “You were talking about your modeling work earlier. You never do that.”

Nino considers, belatedly, if maybe he shouldn’t talk about this in front of the resident reporter, especially when Alya perks up, but Adrien already has it covered: with the same damn hand he’s using to hold his apple, he points a finger at her, a straight shot into her journalistic tendencies. “This park is a no-blogging, no-sourcing, reporting-free zone.”

Alya holds up a hand of oath, the perfect picture of innocence. “Aye, aye.” And then she settles in for a story, and picks up a small branch of grapes. Nino’s brain tries to rapidly catch up.

Only to slow down, and wait.

Because Adrien isn’t saying anything.

He’s just looking at the grass, and biting his cheek.

“I was thinking about inviting Marinette to come see one of my dad’s galleries,” Adrien reluctantly says, at long last, just when Nino thought he was finally going to crack. But now that the words are out in the air, Nino only feels even more convinced that he _is going to crack_ , because what?

“Oh my god,” Alya says, with only the barest twinge of her unparalleled excitement showing, and Nino seriously has to give her props, because there is no way at this point that he could open his mouth right now and sound _level_  about this. “Adrien—she would love that. She would flip out.”

(And Nino’s not really sure what to think about that, at this point,  
about how Marinette would feel about this, that is,  
but he follows Alya’s lead,  
because he trusts her,  
and she still knows Marinette better than anyone,  
but—)

His second thoughts about how to respond to this development take a backseat as he watches Adrien take another bite of his apple: Nino recognizes Evasion and Nerves and Uncertainty so strongly he can practically taste it.

He’s just not used to seeing it in Adrien.

So, Nino pops a potato chip into his mouth and very casually says, “You totally should, man.”

Adrien looks over at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Nino, because he’s _pretty_ sure this is still the answer Marinette would want them to give, “But you’ll probably need some sort of cover set-up to explain it to the press though, right?”

Adrien tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like—so the media doesn’t just assume you two are dating, and start trying to dig up the dirt on your social life.”

He frowns. “Sure… but, they have privacy laws for that, you know.”

“Yeah,” Nino agrees, _trust me, I’ve researched them more than anyone could possibly imagine in the last couple weeks_ , “but that won’t stop word of mouth, or people finding creative ways to try to swindle intel and permission for statements where they can, right?” Adrien is starting to catch on. “Gotta fight off the vultures before they swoop in, right?”

Nino grins, and Adrien’s deadpan only lasts as long as his next breath, and then the exasperated smirk comes rolling in. “One run-in with the press and suddenly you’re an expert?”

(Yeah, Nino has read some stuff, and knows a bit more now,  
because the last thing Marinette would ever want for her civilian life  
is for people to start paying attention to who is important to her.)

(But if anything, for all his research and planning and scheming—  
Nino feels like he knows less than ever.)

Anyway.

Acting Normal™.

“Hey! I’m just sayin’—if you gotta fight ‘em, why not fight them off with a big shiny stick? Or two? Labeled ‘Preparation’ and ‘Cover’? Go all out. Like, make your dad make up an impromptu shadowing opportunity for a student interested in design, or something educational, I don’t know, people always talk about that career-path stuff, and Mari fits the bill all too easily, yeah?”

“Mari?” Adrien echoes, and he frowns.

Nino feels a shock of embarrassment, for some stupid, unknown reason. It might have something to do with the fact that he now realizes he hadn’t even realized what he’d said. “Eh,” Nino gives a careless, dismissive shrug, tries to ignore the way his heartbeat is stupidly picking up. “The whole name is too many syllables.”

“Nino… it’s _three_. Total.”

“Yeah, so? Sometimes that’s just too many.”

Alya snickers. “Agreed!”

Adrien opens his mouth, about to say something, but again—

“I’m here! Oh my god,” Marinette bursts around the corner of the stone wall, and the three of them turn to look at her. “Oh, good, you’re still here—have you finished? How late am I?”

Nino sighs, long and long-suffering.

“Oh, no worries at all,” he tosses out, leaning back onto his forearms to lounge luxuriously on the grass. “You have, _oh—_ " dramatically checks his watch, “three minutes to eat.”

Marinette drops to her knees with an true-to-character groan of distress. He can’t help but laugh—and laughs harder when he privately imagines red and black.

  
//

 

Marinette eats a chunk of her lunch in the next _two_ minutes, and promises she’ll eat the rest during the next break, before their time in the library. She won’t quite admit what she needed to do at home, but that’s totally fine, because Nino knows he’s just going to drag it out of her after school, anyway.

As they walk back to campus, Alya shares with Marinette what they’d discussed, and what theory Nino had proposed. Nino had been planning on telling Marinette himself, but maybe it’s better this way: it’s probably good for all four of them to be on the same page like this, or however close a page they can _get_ , yeah? This way, it seems like all the information is flowing in all four directions... it’s easier to keep track of which secrets he’s supposed and _not_ supposed to know.

Shit, this is hard.

How the hell did Marinette _do_ this by herself for so long?

“You know what I’ve also been wondering?” Nino thinks out loud, after Alya has mostly brought Marinette up to speed. _This is safe, right?_ He can say this safely. This is all speculation. Nino feels better, that Marinette is here, so she can hear this first hand and tell him later whether or not she thinks he’s an idiot. “I can’t help but wonder what kind of impact the powers have on Ladybug and Chat Noir, themselves. Like. Their real selves.”

As their steps all start to slow, he hastily tacks on, “Do you think their protective powers still kick in, even when they’re not activating the suits? Is that part of why it’s so impossible to determine who they are? Because they’re always protected, and always have some measure of their powers, because they have their Miraculous? Holy shit—!” Nino reaches out so fast, he finds Adrien’s arm and grips it, even though he was really aiming for Marinette’s, but wow, _that_ would have been hard to explain, this is better— “Do you think that’s why _Hawkmoth_ is so impossible to find? Because _he’s_ protected by his own weird-ass magic, too?!”

“Nino! You’re a goddamn genius!” Alya punches his arm—it’s not nearly as painful as Marinette’s—but it’s hard enough to make him yelp and release his grip on Adrien, and then: “Where the hell were you when I launched the Ladyblog in the first place? Look at all these ideas flowing! You’re a veritable goldmine!”

Nino’s face is already flushing. It doesn’t help when Marinette lists her head to the side—in a way that is becoming increasingly familiar and _unappreciated_ —and she grins, just a bit. She’s eyeing the inevitable warmth in his cheeks. “Gold?”

The ends of his lips curl in opposite directions. He is looking her pointedly in the eye when he says, “If you’re referring to my complexion, lady, it certainly isn’t _red_.”

Okay, maybe that was a little too close—but Marinette only laughs, genuinely bright, and Alya is laughing just as much, and Adrien—

“Hey,” Nino says, abruptly, because his stomach is flipping with that awkward churning again, and so he curls up the best smile he can, because Adrien looks a little distant all of a sudden, a little removed, and he says to Adrien, tries to pull him back in, “What do you wanna bet Mr. Dupain-Cheng would be a lot less of an instigator _and_ still fuel us with danishes?”

“Ha!” Alya barks. “Totally low!”

“What!” Nino protests. “He would totally feed us danishes, no?”

“Yeah,” Marinette grins. “But he is the _ultimate_ instigator.”

“Hm. Your mom, then?”

“HA!” Alya barks, “HAAA!” and they giggle the whole way back— _“Ohh! I should have totally brought back snacks from home!”_ —and chat about happy, light, nonsense, insignificant, vital things—“ _Girl, you barely ate lunch, why are you feeling bad about not feeding us macarons!”_ —and:

When the girls are a few paces ahead, giggling and pushing, and whispering (not-so-secret)secrets of their own, Adrien says quietly to Nino, “Guess it’s hard to just be a regular teenager, sometimes.”

Nino glances at him. “When you’re a celebrity model?”

Adrien rolls his eyes. “I meant… when there’s actual super villains and superheroes living in your city.”

( _Dude,_ is Nino’s immediate thought,  
and he can feel a headache coming on.  
_You have no idea._ )

When Adrien doesn’t continue, Nino glances up at him, questioning. Adrien shrugs.

“It’s just—we talk about Ladybug a lot, don’t we?” And it’s funny when he says it, the way he doesn’t really look Nino in the eye. _What in the heck…?_

Nino surreptitiously glances ahead, toward Marinette. Back to Adrien. “Isn’t she… relevant to your interests?”

Adrien’s eyes roll further skyward; he’s always been a bit dramatic when it’s come to this love-crush he’s got going, but this time it seems especially put out. “She is,” he sighs, like someone’s just asked him to sign a thousand autographs; like it’s a choice he’s not sure he wants to keep making; like it’s something he’ll keep doing, because it’s incredibly important to him, even though it might be hard to remember why.

_…whoah._

“Hey,” Nino says again, because he’s still not sure what else to say, how to start. “We talk about Chat Noir a lot too, right? And history. And pastries and stuff. And _you_ ,” Nino drops in, a little more slyly— “And _fashion_ , or Fashion Week, or… whatever.”

Adrien catches the slyness in his tone. He arches a brow. “Or whatever?”

Nino lets his tone slide a little more sly. Let’s the dip of his visor match. “Or… _whatever_.”

Miraculously, Adrien seems to surmise exactly what Nino is talking about: his gaze jumps to the back of Marinette’s head, then back to Nino. Nino sees _alarm_.

“I’m just trying to be more friendly,” Adrien says, so quietly that Nino actually has to lean closer to hear him. So quickly, and so promptly, that it can’t mean anything _other_ than the fact that Nino has just hit the nail on the head. Which isn’t that unusual, you know, being best friends and all—so Nino can’t figure out, _Why does Adrien look so nervous about this?_ _Like he’s afraid his intentions will be misunderstood?_

“Okay… that’s nice, I guess. But why?”

“Well, things got off to a really bad start—“

“Dude,” Nino interrupts, aghast. “That was _ages_ ago. You’ve been through like… so much, since then. Months. Weeks. You’ve been to her house. You’ve eaten her food. You've been in her room and played video games and sat at her coffee table and studied. You’ve—you starred in a movie with her?” ( _You_ , holy hell, _almost kissed her?_ _In that same movie? Of mine? What. Did we seriously forget about this. Come on._ )

“Yeah, yeah,” Adrien says, but it sounds so much like he’s shutting something off, like he doesn’t quite _believe_ , that it knocks Nino’s mind backwards. “I know.”

Nino blinks at him, unsure, but follows his lead. They stare ahead awkwardly, and follow the girls quietly back up to the schoolyard. When they reach the steps to head back to class, Adrien is smiley, and all sunshine, and genuine grins.

Nino wonders.

 

//

But really.

He wonders.

//

 

Adrien asks Alya, not because he wants to, necessarily, but because it’s easier. This way, there will be fewer questions than if he’d try to ask Nino… for now, at least. Sort of strange to think that Alya is the go-to person to ask a favor of, rather than Nino Lahiffe, but Adrien is on a mission, and there are other things to consider right now beyond how weird all of his dynamics are turning out to be after one stupid incident in an elevator. Right. Yes.

So.

“I can most definitely find an excuse to head out early,” says Alya between the darkened library bookshelves, with a twinkle in her eye that most assuredly promises she will be back later, to return for an explanation. To _collect_.

Adrien tries to effuse moderate gratitude in her general direction through the overwhelming desire to deadpan himself into oblivion. He appreciates Alya’s cooperation, he _really_ does—

“Anything you want me to say in particular before you head over?”

“I’m not trying to _stage_ anything,” Adrien clarifies, and he is both alarmed and amused by her intensity; he wonders if he’s accidentally just created a new project for her. He’s also a little disappointed by his own answer: would it really be so bad, to add a bit of presentation to this endeavor? Chat certainly wouldn’t think so. Just the opposite.

But this is Adrien.

So he sighs, and says, “I just want to talk to her.”

It’s hard to describe the range of emotion that flits over Alya’s face. It rests on something akin to determination and satisfaction. Adrien takes this as a favorable sign.

“Consider it done, sir,” she says, and smirks, and that is that.

Adrien pretends to peruse the bookshelves for a particular volume of something or other while Alya heads back to their table. Adrien’s not even sure what he is supposed to be pretending to look for. He’s never once spent this long in the encyclopedia section, ever.

 _You’re so boring!_ He can practically hear Plagg’s voice. _So dramatic… you can be much sneakier than this, you know._

Adrien rolls his eyes, mostly for his own benefit. With any luck, the little furball is sound asleep. He will not be pleased if he sustains hunger-related claw-marks while he is trying to actually talk to Marinette.

Or worse: the embarrassment of knowing that his judgmental, apathetic little furry ears are pricked and listening.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alya making good on her word: packing up her belongings, throwing a book bag strap over her shoulder, apologizing through her teeth, making plans to reschedule and amend. Every few breaths, Adrien looks up and sees that Marinette is one step closer to sitting alone at her table.

(Alya sends a single parting glance over her shoulder, to nothing in particular, but Adrien feels the sentiment from across the room, loud and clear. Adrien is perplexed. Alya seems very proud and… impatient?

Has he really been such a hopeless case?)

It takes a few more minutes of steeling himself than he expected: whether it’s because of Alya’s meaningful glance, or the fact that he still doesn’t actually know what Adrien is supposed to say to Marinette to get her to respond more warmly to him, or the suddenly loud and intimidating vibes the empty seats surrounding her table are giving off now that Marinette is working so studiously by herself…

Anyway. He gives himself precisely two minutes of wait time before he considers leaving the encyclopedia stacks to join her.

Two minutes, ten seconds.

Twelve.

 

//

 

He nears the table one second later. The final decision was _not_ made on account of the way Nathaniel had been eyeing the empty seats from across the library.

It was not.

“Hey,” he says, and tries for his most disarming smile. Marinette looks up from her book.

It is not exactly a promising reaction when, as soon as she lays eyes on him, the automatic Soft and Welcoming Smile of the Class President falters; it’s years of practice, and time spent in front of a camera— _in front of his father_ —that prevents Adrien’s from doing the same.

Best to just keep this simple, then.

“Mind if I sit?”

At first, he wonders if he should repeat the question. Second, all of his brain functions are overcome with the overwhelming vision of what _could_ have happened, had it not been Adrien Agreste who had strolled over to her empty library table, but had been, instead, Chat Noir—all swagger and smirks and exuberant, overflowing confidence. She’d probably be glaring at him, halfway towards a smile she doesn’t want to give into. She’d be kicking out the wooden library chair over the carpet for him to lounge into, as if it moved as easily as the rolling desk chair in her room. She’d be laughing at him with her eyes. She wouldn’t tense up, upon seeing him so close. She'd come closer.

“Sure,” is what she says. It sounds friendly enough, but he’s known Marinette well enough now—as President, as a classmate, as a friend to _others_ , as a friend to _Chat_ —to know that she is being cautious. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to space out. I’m just a little tired today.”

“No problem,” he says as he lowers himself down to the chair adjacent to hers, as he lets his bag rest onto the floor. He wants to say something more, because ‘ _no problem_ ’ falls several steps short of the Friendliness Level he is striving for, but he is too busy replaying the words ‘ _just a little tired_ ’ in his head, and wondering how he thought this could possibly have been a good idea. (And _this_ next bit is definitely not a good idea, it’s completely selfish, it’s totally self-serving, but he can’t help it, he can’t help but ask—) “Up late studying?”

“Ha,” Marinette breathes, eyes on the print in her textbook. When Adrien sneaks more glances up at her, in between going through the motions of opening up his own notebooks and textbooks, her eyes are still soft. Adrien bites back a grin; he physically sucks the inside of his cheek between his teeth, and breathes, and tries to focus, and stares at the one of the subtitles inside his textbook, and hears, “That would be… a relatively responsible reason.”

Adrien tucks his grin, and leaves it at that.

“What are you studying now?” he asks. He feels the muscles in his arms want to reach out (to gesture to her book with his pen, to point at her workspace, to nod in her direction) but Adrien holds himself back.

“Now?” Marinette glances up, jaw crooked. “Er… actually… a bit of… mechanical engineering.”

Adrien blinks back in surprise. “I didn’t know you were interested in engineering.” For design, maybe?

Marinette nods slowly, picking through her thoughts. (Is it just Adrien, who feels itchy amidst the silence?) (He’s supposed to be loosening up a bit, he’s trying to act less cordial and professional and, oh, _my god_ , he restrains a sigh— _why is my smalltalk so boring?_

 _Why._ )

“I’m usually not,” Marinette admits, “it’s just become a bit of a recent point of interest,” and the conversation is pleasant enough, but that’s just it: it’s pleasant.

( _My god,_ he realizes, with a bolt of horror. Marinette is treating him like _he_ treats his dad’s most honored gala guests.

 _Oh.  
__—my god._ )

“Er… what about you?” Marinette asks him, when he doesn’t immediately help the conversation proceed. Adrien snaps back into himself as subtly as he can, his ears ringing with mortifying revelation. “What are you going to study?”

“Uh…” Adrien looks down. “I am trying to decide.”

“Huh… well. Um. How about… the biology test is coming up next week? Maybe that one?”

This is a disaster.

//

 

The library closes in twelve minutes, and they are practically the only ones left: Chloe tried her hardest to stick around for as long as she could, but she’ll be the first one to proclaim that she’s not _designed_ for libraries—and oh, she did; _loudly_ —and even Nathaniel tried to hang around at the far side of the library, for whatever reason, but now—

Now, or never.

“Hey,” Adrien says quickly, before he can think better of it, before the tightness in his throat spreads, “Would you be interested in coming to one of my dad’s shows?”

The tip of Marinette’s pencil halts mid-sentence. He’s only seen her eyes so wide a few times before.

( _Including_ , says a voice deep in back of his mind,  
one that sounds like mischief and confidence,  
like a cat and its mouse, it teases, _Including—  
_ _last night_.)

This would be an absolutely horrific time to blush.

So Adrien continues to do exactly what he’s been doing all day: continues to ignore, with absolute resolve, the memory of arriving in Marinette’s bedroom last night in the dark hours of the morning, waking her, talking to her, dragging her down with his strange behaviors and eating her cookies, feeling her true genuine _moving_ concern for him materialize in the shape of two slender arms wrapping themselves around the shield of his suit, of her face hidden in the fabric at his chest, her trust, her _reliance_ and understanding and _welcome_ —

“Adrien,” she breathes, so intent and so focused and _awed_  that, what the hell, holy, _don’t look away! don’t make this weird!! pull it togeth—_ “Do you really mean it?”

He’s not sure he understands the question.

“I… am not sure I understand your question,” he says. He’s not used to so much eye contact. He’s not sure what to do about it. “Do I… do I mean it? Like… was it a joke, you mean?”

“What? I—oh! No!” Marinette rushes out, and her hands go flying through the air between them, bracing like she’s preparing for impact, which Adrien finds interesting and disconcerting all at once. “I just meant—wow. Really? Oh god, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to imply, that like, you would _do_ that. You wouldn’t. Do that, I mean. Joke like that. Of course you _mean_ it, mean it, I just—really?”

Her voice goes so soft.

Adrien suddenly feels a dizzying pressure being lowered onto his shoulders. Where on earth did this come from?

“Well—I,” ( _fuck_ , don’t fuck up, keep it together, be like _Chat!_ ) “You’ve always been interested in design, right? That’s what everyone always says. And your hat design won the competition a few months back… I just… Maybe you’d like to go? See one for yourself?”

Marinette’s hands float to her lap. She’s stunned.

It’s a gratifying feeling, at the moment.

“Wow,” she breathes, and the way she’s looking at him is new: not quite Chat, not quite Adrien. Something in-between. “Thank you,” she says. “I would… love that.”

He can’t think of anything better to say. He just untucks his smile, and tilts his head the tiniest bit, keeps forcing himself to look her in the eye, and says, “No problem.”

After another quick, pointed grin, Adrien lets himself look back down at the book, a little light-headed, almost. After a few moments, in which he can _feel_ Marinette collecting herself, she does the same.

His pen spills useless, perfectly-crafted, delirious notes across the page. Adrien’s smile stretches wider, enough to catch rebelliously at the corners, and eventually breaks apart; he can feel the air on his teeth.

He doesn’t mind.  


//

 

“Dude,” Nino begins. “You’re in a good mood. Did something happen in the library?”

Adrien grins. He _grins_. “No.”

He enjoys, just a little too much, the look of pure, riotous confusion on Nino’s face. “What! That is the biggest load of B.S. I have ever heard! What did you do? Did you discover a new constellation or something? A cure for how boring my P.E. class is?”

“You’re on your own for that one,” Adrien laughs. “I told you to take up fencing.”

“And get my ass kicked? By you? No thanks, man.”

“Hey,” Adrien interrupts, before Nino can complain any more about it, “You wanna hang out after school today?

“Yeah, man! Oh,” he falters, “Oh wait… sorry, I already have plans. Maybe tomorrow, though?”

There’s something in the tone that strikes Adrien as unusual. It’s not too crazy to think Nino might head back to his family’s apartment, or that he might be working on some mixing project or something…

And yet.

“Oh, yeah?” Adrien prompts, light as a cloud. “Anything exciting?”

“Nah, man. Just some extra homework help.”

“Yeah?” Adrien can’t stop pushing. “From who?”

“Oh. Well,” Nino shrugs. “Marinette offered to drill the history dates into my head.”

Adrien nods, but the clouds darken a bit... gradually, slowly; Adrien ignores when they drop into his stomach. He keeps his tone playful, but there’s an edge to it he can’t keep out, another question that rests underneath. “More danishes? Really?”

“And history, man,” Nino points. “Don’t forget the history.”

Adrien releases a laugh. It sounds just as awkward as it feels. “Right.”

“Hey!” Nino starts, like it just occurs to him. There’s plenty of energy to it, enough to make Adrien believe that every ounce is genuine, but, “Would you… wanna come, maybe? I mean—it’s not really as cool as just hanging out, and I don’t know if you really wanna spend your evening off from the photoshoot by doing extra homework—“

(He’d probably have spent this evening studying, no matter whether or not he had any company, Nathalie notwithstanding... After almost a year of friendship, is Nino _really_ asking this question, now?  Is he really _wondering_ if Adrien would like to be invited?)

Adrien feels a wall go up.

 _Yeah, sounds good,_ starts to change, mid-thought. It takes the shape of: “Nah, thanks anyway. I should really head home, I guess.”

Polite. Cordial.

Off.

“All right…” says Nino. And then, somehow, impossibly, unmistakably: silence. They stand there in it, looking at each other, feeling the space, not knowing what to do.

( _Adrien can’t help but remember—_  
_that moment when he first took the seat next to the kid at the front of the class,_  
_the one with the baseball hat and headphones,_  
_when he extended his hand with,_ Hi, I’m Adrien, _like you’re supposed to,_  
_like he’d seen on TV, for when people didn’t already know who you were,  
and instead of shaking his hand, the kid had looked down at it, and—_ )

It’s the most awkward moment that’s ever passed between them, ever since the moment that Adrien first took the seat next to the kid at the front of the class and extended his hand, only to be left hanging.

“All right,” says Adrien, as he starts the shift towards leaving. “See you… tomorrow.”

Nino frowns at him, but Adrien has no idea how much he actually sees. Nino looks disappointed, and confused, but doesn’t pry, doesn’t push.

“Yeah,” Nino nods, a tad wary, preparing for Adrien to head out, towards his getaway car. Nino offers him a small flick of a wave. “See you…”

  
//

It sucks, how much it sounds like a question.

//  
  


(In the car, Adrien thinks, again, of how—)

Nino knows who Ladybug is.

(He gets Ladybug. He gets her secret, her trust, her… contact.  
He gets Alya and Adrien,  
and _Ladybug._

And now  
Marinette, too?

Adrien doesn't like the faint taste jealousy on his tongue:  
He's not supposed to be this kind of person.)

(Adrien remembers Plagg's words—Chat and Adrien, how  
he shouldn't confuse one for the other.

But Plagg forgets sometimes, just how aware Adrien is of the differences between the two; how impossible it is to forget; how often he wonders if Ladybug and the civilian underneath are as different as he is from his other mask.)

//

 _Tonight_ , he thinks.

Tonight and tomorrow and all the days after, Adrien resolves to be better.

//

Nino doesn’t realize that Marinette is speaking to him until she’s practically in his face.

“Hell _o_ , earth to Ni-no,” oh snap, she is _close_ —“What are you zoning out about?”

Nino shakes himself out of it. Adrien probably must have left only a couple of minutes ago, but Nino’s head hurts from all the thinking. Ugh.

“I think I’ve been a shitty friend to Adrien,” he sighs, hard and sudden. “I haven’t been very cool lately.”

“You’re joking.”

“What? No—no, I mean… I haven’t been acting…” What? How can he explain it? “I don’t know. It’s hard to say? I just… I can tell something is off about him, and I haven’t been doing a good job of, like… being around.”

Marinette’s expression turns immediately concerned. _Oh, jeez_. “What do you think is wrong?”

“With Adrien? I don’t know, man. It could be anything. He’s got a lot on his shoulders, so like? Could be _anything_.”

Marinette’s Thinking Face is in full-on action now, and Nino needs _water_ , man, he needs chocolate, his head _kills_. “He seemed pretty okay during lunch in the park? Wasn’t he? I thought that he also seemed pretty okay during study hall period in the library, but maybe that’s just because I’m actually able to mostly stay... _calm_ around him now. Mostly. Ugh. I’m terrible. I’ve been so distracted all day.”

“Yeah, well, lunch seemed okay cuz you weren’t there for most of it,” Nino accuses. “Which! Speaking of—what was that all about—OH. Oh, wait. Better question! What do you _mean_ about the library?”

“Well, after Alya left to go check with the tech department, Adrien came over and asked to sit down. I guess after coming over for the study parties so often, it’s not so weird to think that we could study together in school, too.”

“OH!—in that case, _best_ question: did he invite you to go to his dad’s fashion show?”

Marinette spits out, sucks in air. It’d be hilarious, if he weren’t still feeling off-kilter from his weird parting with Adrien from five or however many minutes ago. “How did you know about that? Did… did you hear! Did he _tell_ you!”

“Wait! It’s my turn for questions!”

“You have like fifty!”

“I have like _four!_ Maybe five—because, also, by the way, I haven’t forgotten—what were _you_ up to last night? Yeah? Yeah? What’s that about? You got bags under your eyes so deep I could go grocery shopping.”

“Nino Lahiffe, is a bold-faced lie and you know it.”

“Dude, you’re totally right, I’m sorry, that was awful—“

“You never go grocery shopping.”

“I am just—I am _dying_ here, lady, tell me _what is happening_.”

He has lost, like. All of his chill.

What is chill? Does he even remember?

Nino doesn’t think he’s known the meaning of _chill_ since he got stuck in that elevator, to be honest.

So distracted, is he, Nino almost misses the expression that falls over Marinette’s face, which—which would have been quite a shame. It’s a very nice, wistful expression.

“I’m not sure I know,” is what she answers, eventually, super thoughtful and soft and conflicted. When she looks at him, he believes her. “I didn’t… sleep much last night.”

Nino allows himself to take in the full effect of Marinette’s complete and utter confusion for a few seconds more, and then his head whips to the bakery. The decision is made.

“Come on,” he pulls at her elbow to snap her out of it, to get them closer to the crosswalk. “Alya texted me earlier and said the the project’s wrapping up so she’ll be coming over in like an hour, and we have stuff to do, yeah?”

“Hmmm...”

“Besides,” Nino blows the air from his cheeks in a giant rush. “I know someone who is in desperate need of chocolate.”

Marinette’s hand carefully reaches down to hold the strap at the hook where it meets her purse. Her eyes are the slightest bit accusatory, a bit questioning. With great significance, she asks, “Oh? _Do_ you?”

“Yeah,” Nino grins through the monumental headache. “ _Me_.”

The punch is hard enough to make him yelp and practically trip over the crosswalk, but Marinette’s laughter makes it worth it.

It’s perfect timing, he thinks.

“By the way. I think we should tell Alya.”  
  
  
  


//

 

“WHAT?!”

 

//

 


	4. the chaise is very Chat-friendly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _3/22/17_. two chapter updates tonight, and here is the second one. i hope you enjoy reading them just as much as i enjoyed writing them!
> 
> unbeta'd for now, so please let me know if you see any glaring errors! ♡
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)

 

 

 ****//

 

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Marinette’s Mom!”

“Good afternoon, dears,” she straightens up from where she’d bent over to reach something in the cabinets under the kitchen counter, and smiles at them… at least until she sees her daughter whip the two of them forward like rockets towards the stairs. “Another project?”

“Just studying today!” Marinette smiles, and leans over the counter on her way past to give her mother a kiss on the cheek. “Alya will be over as soon as her club activities are done!”

Marinette’s mom shakes her head a little but, as always, it’s very warm. “So busy, you all are. Well, Marinette, don’t forget to offer Nino some snacks from the basket.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Marinette’s Mom, that’s my favorite part of coming over he—“

“Thanks, mom, see you later, bye!”

Nino stumbles after her as she practically bursts up through the trap door. By the time he’s ambled out onto her floor on all fours, Marinette has already chucked her purse onto the chaise—Tikki has already flown out, freely, safely, swimming through the air in curly-Qs and backflips—kicked out her computer chair, and rolled back towards her computer to sign on, then catapulted to standing and then, suddenly—Marinette is standing beside an extremely large white board on wheels that he didn’t even know she had. 

“Where have you been hiding that?” he wonders, still unable to muster the energy to stand.

“I haven’t been _hiding_ it,” Marinette huffs, and she skews a smile toward him, and he just knows he must be making a pathetic mess of a figure near the trap door, but Nino is  _overwhelmed_. “I just keep it out of the way until it’s time to do some measurement calculations for design.”

“That’s nice.” 

“Nino. Stop lying on the floor! You have explaining to do!”

Tiki giggles, but as her mouth is currently full of the chocolate chips he'd bought her from the convenience store yesterday, she is not much coming to his defense.

He lifts his head from the hardwood, and looks up to where she is holding out a hand, extending the dry-erase marker to him. Huh. 

“Really?” Nino’s eyebrows skyrocket into his hat. “We need a whiteboard to layout what happened to you last night?”

“ _Ohh_ , in that case,” Tiki chirps a touch _too_ -innocently from the bed loft, which she has practically claimed all to herself. “I wonder what you could draw?"

Nino's desperation to know blazes high; Tikki only looks this mischievous on special occasions.

Marinette’s wide eyes and pink cheeks do nothing to dissipate his curiosity. Even more incriminating is the quick way she declares, “I’m talking about the theories you mentioned today in school, Nino. About the identity-protection and the potential differences in our magic. I feel like we actually have some real ground to cover!”

“Wait,” Nino pushes himself up so that he’s actually sitting on the floor. “Are you… inviting me to help theorize stuff? Really?” He can _feel_ himself light up. “About your superhero-ness?”

“Ni- _no_! Close the door!” 

“Ah! Right, sorry.” Once the door is shut firmly and sealed, Nino staggers up and makes his way to the white board. Marinette passes him the marker, like it’s some sort of magic wand that will start spewing knowledge before their very eyes, but Nino’s experiencing… a road block. 

A few.

“Wait a minute,” he pauses, the marker held aloft. “We can talk about this when Alya gets here.”

Marinette’s face shutters. “Nino…”

“Hey! I just meant that we could easily keep strategizing with another well-informed brain in the room! And we could do it by referring to Ladybug as a mythical distant superhero-person, like always.”

“Yeah…” Marinette’s brow dips, “but five minutes ago, you suggested it. For real.”

Nino fiddles with the cap of the marker. He almost drops it.

“ _Nino._ "

“Yarrgghh,” he says, and tosses the marker onto the white board’s shelf, then plops down onto the chaise with sigh, falls onto his back. He procures a ball from his pocket, and begins to mess around with it, tossing it up into the air. Easy, light, methodical. Toss, catch. Toss, catch.

He's thinking.

The wheels of the rolling chair scratch across the floor as Marinette sits down and scoots closer to where he lies. Tikki's presence swirls down from the loft, until it hovers somewhere in the air between them. He glances over at Marinette, and is amazed by the ferocity of the frown that has made its way onto his face. 

“Hey, didn't you tell me not to sit in that thing backwards?"

"Yes, but _I'm_ not going to break it."

"I found the screws, didn't I?" 

“Nino," she insists, and his tongue stills. "Where did this come from?”

Nino tosses the ball back up into the air over his chest, catches it an inch away from his t-shirt. Marinette’s chaise is his second-favorite place to chill in her whole room. Toss, catch.

“You saw what she did to that security camera,” he tries to explain. “She’s _already_ looking out for you, without actually knowing that it _is_ you. Think of all that she could do if she knew just how much Ladybug means to her.” Toss, _catch_. “Like… how much _more_.”

“Nino… ancient rules, aside… don't you think that's exactly why we shouldn't tell her?"

"No."

" _Nino_ ,” she admonishes. “You’ve _seen_ how stressful it can be on this end! The lying, the secrets, the uncertainty—and now every time I go off to fight, you know just _who_ is in how much danger!”

"First of all: yeah, you're putting yourself in danger, _sure_ , but you’re not in _danger_ -danger. You're more than capable. I totally trust in your superness."

“Uh, okay, well, that's very nice, thank you, but—"

"Secondly." Toss, _catch,_ sits up— “It's not so much about knowing that you're Ladybug; it's knowing that Ladybug is Marinette."

Marinette shakes her head. “Nino…”

Nino twists so that the flats of his feet are now resting solidly on the floor. The ball is trapped in a single hand. A little desperately, he argues, "She loves both, you know? But she knows Marinette better than most. Imagine if she knew they were the same person!"

“Firstly, and finally—it’s against the rules. It’s _so_ against the rules,” she sighs. “Even if there weren’t any other reasons, which there are, this would be enough.”

He feels Tikki twitching through the air, even if he can't see her. She’s keeping out of it, for now, apparently. Maybe letting Marinette have the floor all on her own. It makes Nino think of debate class—how the teacher stands in the middle, watching the proceedings play out, even though she already pretty much knows their grades.

“Second—and this is precisely my point—imagine if she _knew!_ Nino, think!” The nervous energy manifests in Marinette kicking off the ground and giving a random spin on her computer chair; he’s seen her do it a hundred times already, but they’ve all been playful or spastic or excited. Here, Nino can almost feel how much Marinette would like to jump out of her skin. “Alya is already so invested… you know what she’s like, Nino,” Marinette eyes him, and yeah, he knows, okay, he knows. “I’m more afraid this would become her everything. We still have to go to _school_ , Nino… we have to take tests! We have to do homework! We have… try to live out normal lives, even if it’s only for a few hours each day!”

“ _Hours?_ ” Hours, only?

“Ugh. Okay, maybe minutes, sometimes—sort of, if like, Tikki is napping, maybe—" and Tikki giggles, with understanding "—but the point is! Even if I could tell her, which I can’t— _we_ can’t—I would be too worried about her safety!” 

“Wait. But you’re not worried about _mine?_ ”

“ _You_ have a healthy dose of self-preservation," Marinette deadpans. "Alya is _always_ on the scene. Not to mention the time she—"

Marinette cuts off.

Surprised, Nino almost drops the ball. He holds onto it. “What? Time she what?” 

"Nino," she says. The tips of her sneakers hook gently behind the plastic beams on which her chair stands. "Have I told you how I decided to become Ladybug?"

Nino glances at Tikki, who is slowly gravitating towards Marinette’s headspace. Turns back toward Marinette. "Weren't you chosen?" 

Her flats scuff the floor. Her gaze falls away, thoughtful with memory, but Nino doesn't seem discomfort in them like he might have expected to. Just thoughtfulness. "Yes," she agrees, "but I almost chose differently." 

Nino sits up.

“What do you mean?”

“I… almost lost the chance of being Ladybug.”

Nino’s eyes bulge. His first instinct is to rampage, but then he catches sight of the thoughtful look on her face. Questions. Questions and answers, first. Pace wildly, _after_.

“When… when was this?”

Marinette picks at some invisible lint on her knee. “It was when… Stoneheart was akumatized a second time.”

 _A second time_ , Nino thinks, and his gut gives a particular violent churn. He tries to clutch it as secretly as possible, fingers digging into blue fabrics.

 When he regains sense of his voice: “What happened?”

“After… we returned Ivan back to himself the first time, and the Stoneheart army appeared, I took it hard. I… I tried to give up being Ladybug.”

Nino’s eyes bulge, _wider_. “You did _what_?”

“Yeah,” says Marinette, voice firm. “I did.”

“But—but you’re _the_ Ladybug. You’re Ladybug right down to your _core_!”

He’s not tryna be pep-talky. He’s telling the goddamn truth.

(Had Chat Noir ever tried the same?  
_Does Chat Noir know?_ )

“I—thank you,” Marinette flushes. “But in the beginning… I wasn’t sure. I’ve come so far, but… that first akuma. It was my fault Ivan was akumatized the second time, and I knew it.”

“Marinette, that’s _not_ —” 

“So I took off my earrings, and I tried to give them away,” Marinette holds his gaze, “to Alya.”

Nino shoots up off of the bed—he can feel her eyes on him as he paces the room.

“You—you _offered_ them to her?”

“I slipped them into her bag at school. We were so distracted by… Chloe, she never checked her bag. When Ivan was akumatized again, she immediately ran off to get footage,” her brow tilts, as if for emphasis. “She left her bag behind. I took them out of her bag and followed her, so I could try again.” Nino’s pacing increases into a _frenzy_. “By the time I reached her, she was already trapped and calling out for help.”

_—trapped._

Nino feels the floor fall out beneath his feet. “What?”

“Trapped,” Marinette argues, eyes blazing, and for a long, horrible moment, Nino wonders if she’s going to yell at him, or cry, or— “Behind an overturned car... It’s the reason,” her voice drops to a near-whisper, “that I put the earrings back on.” 

Nino sits himself down on the chaise. After a long, silent moment, Marinette disentangles herself from the chair, and follows suit. She sits beside him. 

"She hasn't told you?" 

"I... no,” Nino stares at the floor. “She never mentioned it. I'm not sure she even thinks about it anymore… Not like that."

Marinette huffs, but it’s not necessarily negative. Nino’s head is still reeling, but Marinette’s voice is already seventy steps further to calm. ”Well, I'll never forget it. The more time went on, the more reasons I found to keep wearing them, clearly… but I haven’t forgotten my original reason. And it's part of why I can't imagine trying to tell her now. Think of what she's been willing to do for Ladybug's story... and think of what she'd be willing to do for... well, for me."

Nino is two seconds away from a young-age heart attack. He can’t breathe.

“Marinette, oh my—oh my god, if she had _found_ them—“

“You would probably be dating Ladybug,” she says, and his pacing feet stumble to a stop, and his head snaps so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t get whiplash—and he’s so. fucking. flabbergasted—but between the nonchalance and the gleam in her eye, she’s wearing an actual smirk. She’s teasing him.

Certainty hits him like a lightning bolt.

“No,” he disagrees, completely serious. “If Alya had found them, she wouldn’t have worn them. She would have found the _real_ Ladybug,” he declares, and he feels a little proud, even, at the degree of shock on Marinette’s face. “You just would have found yourself a non-super Battle Buddy a lot sooner. A different one… but sooner.”

Marinette glances down. Nino enjoys being able to make her at a loss for words. Enjoys knowing that, truly, she can _hear_ him. He likes it a lot.

Almost as much as he likes being able to make her forget, just for a moment or two, that being a secret superhero doesn't have to mean that she's alone in it; almost as much as he likes being included in her most trusted circle; almost as much as he likes to make her laugh. 

Just before the room actually starts to feel a touch too heavy, Nino quips, “Let's be real, though. She probably wouldn’t provide snacks as kickass as mine.” 

Marinette’s expression turns wry. “Tikki would have to be the judge of that.” 

“Could she?” Nino leaps at the opportunity—he actually, physically leaps onto the chaise, startling Marinette and Tikki both. She _yelps_. “Could _you_ ?” he asks of Tikki. “I lied. I promise, she would have _awesome_ snacks. And awesome surveillance. _Hacking_ skills. Great publicity management.”

Marinette’s sigh reveals how tempting it really, truly is.

But:

“Nino, the only reason you found out is because of… happenstance. And I’m so, so, so glad it was you—“ his whole chest lights up, indescribable, “—but it was never meant to be anyone.”

Nino’s heart fills and sinks at the same time.

“Seeing how quickly Alya puts herself in danger for knowledge of _Ladybug_ will be nothing compared to seeing how easily she puts herself in danger for the safety of _Marinette_. Even if the rules were different… I wouldn’t tell her. It wouldn’t be right, anyway,” Marinette sighs, deep. “Not when even Chat Noir doesn’t know the truth.”

Nino feels himself deflating. He sinks all the way back down, until he’s lying scrambled across Marinette’s chaise. Marinette peers down at him. “This sucks.”

She nods in solidarity. “I know.”

Nino thinks. _Shit_. The atmosphere in this room…

“At least… we have the danishes?”

When Marinette giggles, he knows he’s doing something right.

It’s pretty amazing, how often that feeling comes up, lately.

Even with all the bullshit.

//

 

“Okay. One last thing, before I move on from this… how in the hell has she not figured it out on her own?”

Marinette purses her lips. “There are times when I think she’s come close, to be honest. Lots of times.” 

“Like when she was Lady Wi-Fi?”

“No, not even. She drops these lines every so often, like about me never being where I should be, and leading a double-life.”

“Holy cow. _Does_ she know?”

“No,” Marinette says firm. “I believe she doesn’t. I think she _would_ have figured it out, under different circumstances, but… it’s part of the magic of the mask… I think… as long as I’m willing to protect my identity,” Marinette muses, “the magic will do what it can to protect me, too.”

Tikki slowly lowers down to rest upon Marinette’s shoulder.

“Are you saying… you think that if you stopped working to hide your identity so much… the protective magic for that might start to fade, too?”

“I think… it’s possible. Maybe? But even when I try my hardest, it's never fail-safe. It's just lucky. And right now I can tell that it wants me to do everything in my power to protect what I have.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Marinette sighs. “That’s what I mean… It’s not just my choice.”

“It’s not even mine,” says Tikki, finally speaking up. She's holding onto a lock of Marinette’s pigtail. She looks very proud.

Marinette sighs, with finality. “Right," she says. "It’s the Miraculous’.”

//

 

They have seven minutes to spare.

“OKAY,” Nino claps once, loudly, despite the marker still being in-hand, “So!—to recap:

  * Operation Battle Buddy will continue as is.
  * You dipped out during lunchtime today to go have a private chat with Tikki—totally lame, but understandable. Also, she needed sustenance and was craving sugar.
  * Lame.
  * Understandable.
  * Note to selves: pack more lunchtime snacks.
  * Tikki prefers the combo: sweet and salty. Duly noted.
  * Alya will continue her 'super research' as her own project, and we’ll dig in on the down-low from the appropriate angles.
  * Our next priority is to assist Alya with getting sound recording samples from both Ladybug and Chat Noir and, after she’s done her own tests, we’ll run another set with my equipment to check for variables.”



“Wow, variables? You’ve actually been paying attention in chem lab, haven’t you?”

Nino continues on as if he hasn’t heard: more lines are drawn, more circles are circled, more dots are punctuated all throughout the white space— “Meanwhile, things between Ladybug and Chat Noir are… pretty shaky. Ladybug’s attempts to soften the blow, so-to-speak, have only exacerbated the landing, and now that the truth made it out onto the table, they’re on the outs. Official Status of Team Trust Levels amount to… ‘Shaken’.” 

“ _Ugh_ ,” says Marinette, and buries her face into the pillow in her lap. Nino sympathizes, but there is a _lot_ more on this board that needs addressing before Alya makes it over here.

“Which is _further_ complicated by the fact that Chat Noir, whom you have only recently begun to acknowledge genuine feelings for—maybe! maybe, okay! watch the hat!—courtesy of your steady ‘getting over’ feelings for the one and only Adrien Agreste—okay! okay!—anyway, Chat Noir has _clearly_ been actively seeking you, Marinette, out—which _you_ believe is a direct result of you, Ladybug, and Chat Noir… being… on the… outs.” 

Nino stands back to survey the graphic organizer web on the white board. 

“This is a clusterfuck.”

“Nino, your language _never_ used to be this bad.”

“I never used to know you were a superhero,” Nino replies, without looking away from the intersecting lines of black and red. “Give me some leeway.”

“I told you,” Marinette is suddenly at his side, sighing hard enough to raise the little hairs on the back of his neck. His hand slams to the skin there, fighting down the tickle, which only makes it easier for her to snatch the marker from his grasp. “Chat Noir has been hurt, so he’s seeking out the only other individual he keeps close contact with besides Ladybug while he’s in the suit.” 

“Which is you,” Nino restates. “ _Out_ of the red suit.”

“Which makes it worse,” Marinette groans, and adds another frowny-face next to the appropriate box. “He’s seeking refuge from the same person who’s causing him the grief in the first place. Just… not the same persona."

"But," Nino tries to remind her, "is still  _you_."

"On a semi-related note,” Marinette brightens a bit, and veers to the other side of the board, where the mess labeled _Fashion Week_ lies. “On the topic of personas and improvements and getting a grip: now that I’ve finally come to better terms with the fact that Adrien is too in love with _Ladybug_ to notice _me_ , I’ve been able to act much calmer around him, and almost act like myself. Sort of. It’s still so awkward, but I think it’s getting better? For me, anyway. He doesn’t have any idea, clearly, of how I felt about him, so he probably just thinks I’m getting over my shyness or something, but at least I know why I’m able to look in the eye without exploding these days, so that’s been helping, _and!_ Look at how well it’s actually starting to work out! He actually invited me to his dad’s show! Granted, I don’t know any details or logistics or anything, and it was only a vague invitation at best, but—”

“Marinette, I could have eaten four danishes in the time that it’s taken you to finish this single thought, and that’s including the time that it would have taken me to walk down to the kitchen and come back, if I’d known.”

“Oh, stuff it.”

“I would, if I had a danish… which is probably what Chat Noir would say, when he’s dropping by on late springtime middle-of-the-nights to _woo_ you—“

“STUFF IT.” 

“Alya!” comes the bright greeting from Marinette's mom from downstairs, and Nino and Marinette stare, shell-shocked, into each other’s wide-panicked eyes, “Nice to see you!”

And then the room erupts in a flurry of movement—Nino bangs elbows with Marinette no less than four times in their haste to erase all of the marks from the whiteboard, because they clearly have not considered an Emergency Erasure Escape Plan in their list of Emergency Plans—and by the time the trap door lifts open and Alya peeks out from underneath, Nino is sprawled out on the actual floor, clumsily tossing the ball up into the air. Marinette is at her computer with a hastily concocted history study sheet document open and ready for actual usage, but it only takes up half the screen: Nino can see part of her desktop photo behind the document, which is a pictured snapped by Mrs. Marinette’s Mom last weekend of the four of them, stuffing their faces around the coffee table, pastries and textbooks and all. 

“Wow,” Alya teases, shaking her head fondly at the pitifully boring sight they create. “Don’t party too hard without me.” 

“Ha, ha,” Nino glares, and moans miserably, for effect—because ‘ _history’_ , or whatever they’re pretending to be doing, supposed to be doing, whatever normal teenagers complain about these days—and all the while, Nino’s heart pumps to a rapid-fire but nevertheless _relieved_ beat. He’s never been so grateful for a solid floor.

It’s only when he eventually moves to sit up—Marinette and Alya chatting about study options and test dates—that Nino reaches into his pocket and—whoops—finds Tikki.

 _Oh, goddammit_ , Nino rolls his eyes, but carefully removes his hand. He feels a tiny _nudge-nudge_ to the wall of his abs, perhaps in gratitude or acknowledgement, who knows, and then he silently says goodbye to the chocolate-covered potato chips he’d been planning to save for later. _Awesome_ , he rolls his eyes. This is why he’d brought _four_ bags; one for him, three for Tikki. Who knew something so damn tiny would have such a monstrous appetite?

But Nino grins as he looks at Marinette and Alya giggle over some mnemonic device they’ve created about something or other, and he grins as he thinks about the empty white board hastily tucked out of the way behind them, and he grins as he thinks about the look he’ll see on the cashier’s face at the convenience store when he goes in tomorrow and buys _five_ bags of chocolate-dipped potato chips at once, and he thinks, _all in all_ , this really isn’t a bad price to pay.

 

//

 

Chat Noir acts his usual self that night on patrol, which is important. 

It means that when Ladybug sends meaningful glances his way all evening, he lets them bounce right off, pretends he doesn’t feel them at all. It means that the next day when another akuma attacks, the job feels a little less like breathing in shards of glass. It means that when the time comes for their self-congratulatory fist-bump, Chat actually believes that things will be okay again, soon enough.

Things couldn't possibly be 'normal,' in that they're the way they were before, but—

(Chat’s felt the barest fringes of an approaching hurricane ever since he put on the ring for the first time. He didn’t know the name or the shape of it, didn’t think about the danger, just slipped the ring over his finger in a split-impulse second, called the transformation to his body as quickly as the shutter of a lens without every considering the storm on the horizon, but he could feel it, he’s always known it’s coming, but for now, Chat is just enjoying the feel of the mist on his face, the calm between rainy days, and hoping he doesn't get left out in the cold.)

//

 

On the other hand—

For all that Marinette looks Adrien Agreste in the eye, even after that day in the library, Marinette actually seems to notice him less.

Adrien stares down at his biology textbook in class, wondering if the prickling at the back of his neck is Marinette’s gaze. It’s silly to think so, though, because she and Alya are clearly talking quietly to one another about managing their time for all the end-of-term assignments. Adrien twirls his pen. He reads the same sentence nine times over.

Adrien walks with Nino through the hallways, listening to Nino talk about his DJ-ing, about how he’s thinking of upgrading to some more advanced audio-recording equipment. He and Nino hang out in the park, and go grab sweets from Marinette’s parents at the bakery, and chill on the bleachers in the school grounds, and Adrien wonders why—even though he's started school like he's always wanted; even though he hangs out with kids his age like he's always wanted; even though is a goddamn _superhero_ on the side—he still can't seem to get out of his own head.

Adrien chats with Alya about anything and everything—different magazine publications, dates that will surely be on the test regarding the Revolution, how many times Ladybug and Chat Noir have been sighted in the last few weeks ( _it’s less and less and less and less_ —), how busy Marinette has been these days, how much and for how long Marinette’s been in love with his dad’s designs, how Alya’s babysitting gigs are going, how much they both love sweetened tea, _hey, how have you been doing? you’ve seemed a little busy lately—_  

Adrien thinks about homeschool, and teenaged-celebrity trials and tribulations, about being one-half of a secret superhero duo when the other half was supposed to be _your_ other half, in the way that two colors complement one another on a wheel, in the way that one falls and the other catches, the way that there are two sides to a coin. Life is a bit messier than that.

Adrien thinks about how, before that day in the elevator, Chat had actually thought he and Ladybug were growing closer. Right after it, even, before the shock had settled, she’d opened up to him in a way she’d never allowed herself to before, she’d let him hold her, she’d let him comfort her. He’d never been able to do that, before, unless you counted the time she almost gotten eaten by a goddamn T-rex, but the thought of it still makes his stomach hurt, so he tries not to, honestly. They’re partners, teammates, and, for the longest time, he thought they were friends—

Even with the masks.

(Friends wear masks with each other sometimes, right? People wear masks all the time. Adrien’s been trained to do it from a young age, he’s been wearing one more and more over the last month or so in ways he didn’t even expect, ever since Ladybug was forced to reveal her identity to someone who wasn’t her partner, her teammate, her friend.)

Adrien thinks about how Nino is a better actor than he’s ever expected, a better storyteller than he’s ever credited him for. Nino won’t spill, because it’s not his story to tell, which Adrien respects more than anyone will ever realize, but some days Nino is so good at pretending that Adrien could almost hope to forget that Nino knows the secret at all—until Alya reminds him of the elevator, or the last festering clinging journalist tries to throw the incident onto just _one last tabloid headline_ , or Adrien sees a distracted expression cross Nino’s face mid-conversation, wherein Adrien can’t can’t can’t help but wonder— _are you thinking about Ladybug, too?_

( _Do you know where she is? What she’s doing, right now?_  
_What her favorite color is, what her smile looks like without the mask, who she trusts?  
__Will you see her again before I will?_ ) 

Adrien notices that Marinette acts even weirder around him now. She looks him in the eye, makes polite smalltalk, greets him with a little wave and a little smile, says his name without stumbling over the sounds, but when she looks his way he can’t help but think she’s looking through him, looking _past_ him, like she’s remembering or imagining someone else.

(He blames this for the two dreams from this past week, the ones where he’s walking through the school hallways with his books in hand, and Marinette stops short and _gazes_ at him, and Adrien’s so shocked and so punch-drunk-pleased that for a moment he can hardly believe that she’s looking at _him_ like she looks at all of her friends—popular and friendly and strong-willed and kind Marinette, finally forgiving him for an awful series of first impressions—and then he looks down, sees black, and remembers that Marinette has never looked this way at Adrien.)  

Adrien thinks about Marinette, and how, like everything else in Adrien’s life these days, their dynamic has changed: whereas their conversations before had always been unsure and careful and stilted or stuttered and shy, had always felt like the both of them needed so hard to _try_ , now they feel like stale air and empty pauses, painful shrugs and forced smiles. Adrien begins to dread seeing the look in Marinette’s eye when she catches sight of him. She look _through_ him, like maybe she’s looking for someone else, or—maybe, rather—she sees _him_ , but he’s someone she didn’t expect to find, someone she wasn’t hoping for. Adrien isn’t unused to feeling forgotten, or left behind, or left out, but.

This sting is new.

Adrien isn’t sure what to make of it. He doubles his efforts to be more overtly-friendly, to spend more time engaging with the whole group when they’re together, in the living rooms and parks and the homeroom. Adrien acts more like himself, ever watchful, and counts the number of times Marinette’s gaze strays from the conversation while he’s speaking. _She’s been going through some stuff lately_ , he remembers, hears Nino’s casual, assured voice.

Nino claims he has no idea what Adrien’s talking about, when he mentions the awkwardness, but Nino is a better liar than he's ever credited him for, and Nino is full of stories that aren’t his to tell, apparently, so Adrien is not sure why he’s bothered to ask.

//

 

“Do you think Chat has anyone?" 

Nino looks up from the crosswalk signal. He’s taken to meeting her at the bottom of the bakery instead of at the steps outside the front of the school. It’s only a few extra minutes together, but Marinette smiles in appreciation every time. It has, as an unexpected side effect, also encouraged her to be more punctual. (Mrs. Marinette’s Mom and Mr. Dad approve.)

Nino ponders this. “He has Alya looking out of him, just like she’s looking out for Ladybug.”

“Yes, but... I meant.... closer."

He frowns. “He has Ladybug,” says Nino, like it’s obvious. 

“I think... Ladybug… has been doing more harm than good, lately." Nino glances to her profile as they cross the intersection. It’s such a short walk to school.

"Well... he has you."

  
//

 

More often than not, Chat’s nights end up with him at Marinette’s house. He waits until patrol has finished up, races the wind for a stint in the crisp nighttime air, and then touches down on her balcony. Most nights, she leaves it unlocked.

The chaise is his favorite place, he decides—and not because the rolling computer chair is strictly off-limits, according to reasons he is not privy to, but it’s hardly tail-friendly, anyway, so he only grouses for the sake of grousing, rather than any real want. The chaise is very Chat-friendly, and he calls it so. 

“It’s almost like you knew I’d be spending so much time here,” he grins, as he reclines over the chaise in the most comfortable manner possible, and points to the small cat-head plushie that sits upon her desktop. 

Marinette rolls her eyes, mouth full of the cookies that she’s popped into her mouth—because if Chat Noir comes to visit, and one would like cookies, one must eat the cookies _before_ Chat has half the chance—so he is completely unopposed when he says, “Treats, a warm chaise…” Not to mention the little night-light she’s procured over the last week or so, which she claims is easier for her parents to understand and accept than her keeping the bright overhead light on all night. Chat spots something on the desk, and grins. 

“Cat-toy?”

In a flash, he’s up and swiping it out from her desk, and is back on the chaise in a comfortable lounge, all before Marinette even manages to finish the note of her yelp. Chat takes a small, secret kind of delight in the way Nino’s spare earbuds—the ones he never uses, really—trickle onto her desk without the pointed ear to sustain them. He holds up the stuffed toy so that it’s smiling at her, alongside his own. Everything about this moment feels warm and sly, and Chat is actually quite comfortable, and enjoying himself, when he holds it ups and says, “One would almost think you’re trying to lure in a stray.”

Marinette swallows down the cookies, then takes a swig of her milk. She’s got one brow arched high and a curled-up grin when she says, “A bakery is no place for cats, thanks.” Marinette is brushing him off, like always, but the way she says it makes Chat’s stomach go warm. 

“And yet here I am,” he grins, wide-open and white teeth gleaming, and that’s something he won’t tire of showing off, he thinks, within the small stretch of vanity he allows himself. He has a model’s smile. How often does he get to truly put it to use?

“Yeah. You keep mistaking my hatch for a kitty-door.”

The girl has the gall to toss a cookie at him. His reflexes should allow him to catch it easily, but he’s so distracted with delight that he’s clumsy. The cookie is delicious, but he’s got crumbs in his hair, he just knows it.

“It’s so inviting, isn’t it? And you know, they do say a way to a cat’s heart is through his stomach,” and _oh_ , Chat withholds the roll of his eyes, _isn’t that the damn truth_.

“Heart? I was under the impression you simply had two stomachs in there.”

Chat’s ears perk, as does the rest of him. “Oh? Were you searching for it?”

Marinette glares, but— _if thine eyes do not deceive me_ —the tips of her ears have gone wonderfully pink. His mouth feels awkward, and Adrien may very well swallow his own tongue, if he’s not careful, so he’s grateful for the few moments he’s granted to collect himself as she musters out the fiercest deadpan he’s ever seen over her face. (He’s not even trying to hide the grin, is openly tweaking the ears of the plushie-cat in his lap with the playfulness of someone who _knows_ a thing or two, and inside his chest his heart beats too fast, too hard, like it’s soaking up all the energy in the space around him, the way it does before he sinks his claws into an akuma, before he makes the leap over the divide between two high-rise buildings, before he takes a step closer to Ladybug over the beam of the Eiffel Tower, wait, no?)

“Hardly,” she says, brows drawn into a fierce-fierce line, and despite the uneasy pattering of Chat’s heart over the slightly disconcerting blip of a thought that had snuck up on him, Marinette’s staunch denial is exactly the kind of balm that his too-polite daylight hours _needs_. Flatly, “I thought you were just full of puns.” 

“What about you?” Chat ignores, Chat _ventures_ , with one corner of his smile rising higher than the other. His claws pull and tug at the cat in his lap, but he’s unfailingly gentle, careful not to prick or scratch. His heart is still pounding from his mind’s little slip. “How does one get through to Marinette’s heart, hm?”

“It’s not puns,” she says immediately, tilting her head with deliberate disapproval, and there goes his stomach again, that weird little wobbly thing, “I can tell you that.”

“Wound me, why don’t you.” 

“Apparently I’m too busy _feeding_ you.”

“So if not puns,” Chat presses on, for whatever reason he cannot explain, honestly, why doesn’t he just let this _go_ , it’s not even a very lucrative topic, this is purely for curiosity’s sake, and _you know what they say_ — “What is it, then? How does one come into favor in the eyes and heart of Marinette Dupain-Cheng, yeah?”

“Oh?” she echoes, brows arched decidedly sly, and Chat is grinning at her obstinance despite the actual burn of his curiosity. “Are _you_ searching?”

Chat laughs, pure and silly.

“Oh, no, no,” he grins, poking each individual tooth that’s been sewn onto the smile of the cat. It starts out warm, still bright from Marinette’s medicinal barbs, but each press of his claw digs a tiny bit deeper into himself, starts to open and leak out the things he’d really rather not think about right now. By the time he’s reached the end of his smile, it’s all ready to come pouring out. “I’m afraid there’s only one favor I’ve been after, and that heart is decidedly red and black.”

Chat’s not looking at anything in particular, so he’s startled when he realizes that Marinette hasn’t replied. He looks up, and his stomach drops, because Marinette is looking down at the plushie in his lap with a peculiar kind of frown. Chat turns his gaze to look.

“Oh,” he says. His throat seizes up for a too-long moment, and he’s incapable of any of the dozen apologies he has scrambling to get out, and it’s such a long moment that by the time he finds his voice again, the apologies have all upped and dried, because what he says next is, “I can fix it.”

He feels Marinette’s sigh more than he hears it, and he’s still staring down at the little plushie—half its grin is ripped open, its stuffing spilling out—partly because he can’t believe what he’s done, but mostly because he’s too scared to look at Marinette’s face just yet, and then she’s coming to sit at the edge of the chaise, and Chat scrambles quickly to sit up, to make room. “I’m sorry.”

The few lengths of breaths it takes for her to carefully extract the plushie from his hold is a lifetime. He relinquishes the toy with the mere softening of his fingers—what had he been _thinking_ —and as she carefully floats it over to her lap and examines its half-ruined face, Chat Noir blurts, “I’m sorry.” 

She _tsks_. “You’re lucky this baker’s daughter also happens to be an aspiring designer,” she teases lightly, but she still hasn’t met his eye. Chat’s stomach roils. “Kitty has sharp claws, yeah?”

“Marinette, I’m sorry, I should have been more careful—”

“It’s all right,” Marinette says, and she finally looks up at him. His mouth falls open, but no words fall out, because the look he sees is unlike anything she gives Adrien, but it’s also unlike anything she’s ever given Chat Noir, either. A familiar tightness presses in on Adrien’s chest; Chat Noir has seen Marinette livid, and thoughtful, and sarcastic and cheeky, kind and patient and warm, fierce and impatient and unapologetic, happy and grinning and laughing bright, awkward and shy and floundering, strong and confident and vocal, has seen her compassionate and wistful and sad.

This is the first time he has seen her look disappointed.

In him. 

“I can fix it,” he says, and when she doesn’t look up he can’t help but lean forward, press closer until she looks up at him, until maybe she sees how much it weighs on him, how close his chest is to caving in. _Not you, too_ , he swallows, and pleads, and, “I’m not half bad with a needle.” 

Marinette’s lips actually quirk, a little bit, which is almost enough for him to slip the plush from her fingers and get to work right now, this very moment, but then Marinette’s tiny, breathy laugh startles him back into frozen, cautious alertness. “With or without the claws?”

Chat wants to take the teasing and run with it—to catch it and throw it back, to tease as they’d done only a few minutes before—but the air still feels too fragile, and he’s having a hard time sifting through it, picking out the reasons why. It’s never acceptable to ruin someone’s things— _so_ destructive, _you are, always, always, always always all ways_ —but Chat is suddenly dying to know if this little cat is special to her for some reason, if it holds particular memories. He wants to know what he’s dug into, so that his apology might match.

“It’s all right,” she tells him, because his brain never quite got around to picking up her jab, and she’s yet to start working on it, which is making him nervous—he keeps looking at the broken smile, and wondering why they both keep staring at it without _doing_ anything about it, he can fix it, he can fix it _right now_ —“Mistakes happen, right? Even if we’re careful.”

Marinette gets up to retrieve a needle and thread at last, which leaves Chat with an empty space on the chaise. He watches her, and she _looks_ relaxed, but Chat’s never been this tense unless it’s facing off against an akuma ( _or a woman in a red and black suit—_ ) ( _or his father—_ ) and he’s not yet ready to hope that he might actually be forgiven. He doesn’t expect that she’ll actually return to sit next to him on the chaise, but she does.

“I’m sorry I got distracted and destroyed its smile,” he says, because it’s as honest and true an apology as he can make it. “I won’t do it again.”

Her gaze dutifully turned to the slow, methodical sewing she conducts in her lap; Adrien knows without a doubt that Marinette’s skill would allow her to complete such a simple mending task with her eyes closed, so Chat is not by any means free to relax. 

“I get distracted too, sometimes,” Marinette responds, after a few long moments. “When I think about somebody else, and I lose track of who I’m really talking to. Sometimes, their smiles break apart a little too. It’s a habit I’m trying to break.”

Chat’s mouth falls open. He waits, silence ringing in his ears, for the rest of the story.

Marinette doesn’t tell.

He watches with rapt attention as she expertly mends the little black cat’s smile, all white and gleaming teeth in a perfect orderly row, and hopes that Marinette understands how much her friendship means to him, and how sorry he is, and if Adrien could be any more of an idiot, to have been worrying so hard over the way Marinette’s attention always seems to stray, to have so rarely checked his _own_ expressions while artlessly trying to catalogue hers.

“I’m sure they understand,” Chat Noir promises—if not for the past few days, then for the coming ones, because Chat Noir may make many mistakes, but he rarely makes the same one twice. Adrien learns.

Marinette’s smile is small and fleeting and skeptical, but genuine, and when Chat glances back down to her busy hands, he’s surprised that she’s already finished. The thread is snipped with a ring of finality.

Chat feels like he should graciously bow out for the evening, but he’s afraid to leave. 

“Marinette, I’m glad you let me come bother you,” he says, all in a rush. “I don’t _mean_ to be a bother—at least, not a _real_ one—and if you’d rather I keep my visits to a minimum, or to daylight, then I totally understand, but I just want you to know how much—”

“ _Ugh_ , Kitty,” she groans, and Chat—blindsided and unprepared as he is, which is the only reason _why_ —he is overwhelmed by the strength of Marinette’s one-handed shove. He winds up sprawled out across the chaise, and only just manages to catch what’s been thrown into his face in the nick of time—the plush. He stares up at her, startled. “What do you take me for?” she demands, and there’s the faintest spark of annoyance, which is the most familiar and comforting thing he could have hoped for, but the panic is still a little too fresh, he’s still not ready to let himself breathe easy. “You’re ridiculous.” She gently yanks the plushie from his startled hold; he lets it go, easily.

She stalks over to the desktop in the dim glow of the city lights and the faint nightlight, places the little plush back in its proper resting spot. Chat is halfway to a sigh of relief, when Marinette actually picks up Nino’s fallen earbuds… and carefully hangs them over its right ear. 

Chat watches.

“Here,” she sighs, and comes back over, two cookies in hand. “Stuff that silly mouth.”

He obeys.

They chew in silence for a minute or two, and Chat desperately hopes that this faint, residual awkwardness is not indicative of the future state of their friendship. ( _Is this how friendships are ruined?_ he wonders. _In accidents and careless mistakes and not paying attention?_ It rings truer than Adrien would like.) He nibbles at his cookie.

“Are you that worried?” Marinette asks him, a few minutes later. Chat’s only halfway through his cookie—he’s got little appetite; the years of conditioning against sweets always seems to kick in during times of stress, don’t they—but Marinette is already replacing her third. He’s confused. She clarifies. “That I’d kick you out, over a little mistake?”

Chat tries to think of something witty to say—he hasn’t been acting like himself, Chat, at all. He’s said almost nothing to lighten the atmosphere, and he has a dreadful need to compensate. Nothing comes. He feels a hand plant itself over the side of his face, and once more he is pushed away; it has the uncanny effect of making him feel even closer.

“It’d take more than that to make me actually angry at you, Kitty,” she huffs, and tries for brusquely affectionate, but the whole room feels softer, somehow. It actually eases the pressure in his lungs, a bit. “Not that this is an _invitation_ to come in and wreck my stuff, you know. But. Yeah. It’d definitely take more than something like this to make me upset, you know.”

 _What would it take?_ he almost wants to ask, but is afraid she wouldn’t understand right away, that he only wants to know so that he can make sure never to come close to it, not ever.

Chat tries for his best half-hearted grin, instead. 

“It won’t happen again,” he crossed his heart. “Cat’s honor.”

“What?” Marinette huffs a breath of laughter. “Rip open my cat plushie’s face?”

_Make you disappointed in me again._

“Get so distracted, while spending time with you.”

Marinette frowns at him. “You can’t promise something like that. Or you shouldn’t, anyway,” she amends. Her smile quirks up, with effort. “Superheroes have lots of things to think about, don’t they?”

She’s giving him an out, he realizes. Even now, she’s trying to make things easier for him.

“It’s not just…  superhero stuff,” he tells her, voice gone hushed. He feels her go still, beside him. 

“Oh,” she breathes. “What do you think about?” 

When he looks up at her, Marinette’s blinks come slow and heavy. Her lips have fallen open.

_Oh._

Chat’s throat seizes once more. He swallows it down, forces out, “What do _you_ think about?” It’s rushed, more nervous than Chat Noir should _ever_ sound, “When you get distracted, and—” _I, Adrien_ “—people, start to notice?”

“Oh,” Marinette’s lashes flutter more quickly—the spell breaking—as the realization of whatever it is that draws her out dawns on her once more, and in the seconds that follow, Chat recognizes that he’d felt a spell _break_ , which means that he’d felt a _spell_ — “Lots of things, honestly. Civilian things and… other things, too.”

“You should talk to—them!” Chat blurts, and when Marinette startles, Adrien feels the tips of his human ears turn pink, and the feeling is so disorienting it doesn’t even matter that they’re hidden by his wild hair. “The people, or person, who you said notices. When you’re distracted. You should talk to them. I think they’ll understand.”

 _He does_ , thinks Chat, _I do, do, I do._

“Hm,” Marinette smiles softly, mostly to herself, but it feels like she’s including Chat in her little space of thought, and it never fails to amaze him, how easily Marinette can _do_ that, how inclusive and welcoming and warm she can make a room feel... when she wants someone to feel this way. “Maybe.”

He opens his mouth to argue, to _persuade_ , but then a cookie is forced into the space between his teeth, and Marinette’s riotous laughter over his resulting crumb-stricken, sputtering catastrophe is almost to rouse her sleeping parents on the floor below, and so she sends him off with bright eyes and a wide-open smile and a gentle push on the shoulders to scurry him up the ladder, and even though he’s laughing all the while, by the time reaches the top of the roof in the late-night city darkness, Chat realizes that there is very real pit of regret in his chest, the kind that whispers _you missed something_ , and it might have bothered him less if he hadn’t known what it was, but Adrien thinks back to the _oh_ her lips made when they parted with surprise, and.

He knows exactly what he’s missed.

//

 

And then quickly, all at once, Adrien starts to realize how gradually it’s all been happening right under his very nose. Chat Noir likes Marinette quite a great deal. Marinette actually likes Chat. It’s nice to call on her, it’s nice to be able to call her a friend. He wishes that Adrien could say the same.

But for all his efforts, Marinette and Nino are always together, always hanging out, and Marinette has yet to take Chat Noir’s advice. _Why hasn’t she tried to talk to me yet?_ he wonders. _What is she waiting for?_

Adrien still texts Nino, every day or so, outside of school hours, and the actual words on the screen argue that things are Same as Always.

But then sometimes, Adrien will text Nino up—say, he gets out of a photoshoot early, or his dad gives a rare nod of spontaneous approval for a hangout—and _hey, you wanna play Ultimate Mecha Strike_ or _go to the park?_ is usually met with _yeah, that sounds great, marinette and i are kicking it at the park right now, wanna join?_ and sometimes, _i’m eating the dupain-cheng’s out of business, but i need assistance, get over here!_ or, occasionally, _hey, yeah, i’m hanging with marinette until four, wanna meet up after that?_

Adrien stares down at his phone. Puts his phone in his pocket.

Stares out the window.

//

 

Adrien decides he’s not going to tell Nino about these feelings, just yet. Nino has been so preoccupied lately, anyway.

It’s like how it was when he brought up the changes to his dynamic with Marinette; Nino probably won’t really see it.

 

//

 

“Hey,” says Adrien, and Marinette startles so badly her elbow flies into the corner of her locker. Adrien jumps in response—can’t help it—and looks on in dismay when Marinette’s deeply-disturbing hiss of pain morphs into an expression screwed so tightly-shut that Adrien actually wonders if they should go to the nurse. She’s clutching her elbow and not moving and Adrien is starting to think that this was a terrible mistake but he’d thought they were _past_ this.

“Hi,” she says, peering out from one open eye. She’s still clinging to her elbow, so he glances at it. And again. “What’s up?” 

Are his eyes too wide? Maybe. “Are you okay?”

“Totally,” she dismisses, too strained for comfort. “What’s up?”

Adrien isn’t so sure about this now. But still—he’s tried so much else—he has to try this. “Can I talk to you about something?”

The shape of her expression shifts. With Chat Noir, he’d recognize it as concern, immediately; with Adrien, it could be just about anything. “Sure,” she says, and forces her shoulders down. She must see the tension in him somewhere, because her head tilts in a way that he recognizes as _'_ curious', but she’s still holding onto her elbow, and he’s distracted. “Do you need the notes from English class?”

Actually, he does—Nino hasn’t gotten around to sending them over just yet, for some reason, but that’s not why he came over to talk to her. “No. I mean, yes—I do, but I actually wanted to ask you about something else.”

“Oh,” says Marinette, like she’s trying to build a platform beneath herself, and he keeps taking away the bricks as she’s about to lay them down. “Do you have a question about the student council event?”

Adrien can feel a frown forming; he can’t help but recognize how differently this conversation would be progressing if Alya were here. Or Nino, or especially both. _Do I really seem this stiff and professional?_

He both resents and wants Chat’s mask more than anything.

“Oh, wow,” Marinette’s countenance tilts forward, and she searches his face. “What’s up?”

The last thing he wants is for his internal distress to scream out like a homing beacon, but perhaps this will make things easier: she’s probably more likely to believe what he has to say. With that, Adrien straightens up. 

“Would you maybe wanna go for a walk somewhere? I know you usually head home for lunch break, but maybe we could visit a cafe and talk?” Marinette is blinking, rapidly, and it’s slightly distracting, but he will _stick to this_ — “It’s just, I know that it’s almost been a year since I enrolled in school and—holy cow, you’re bleeding.” 

“What?” Marinette blinks, blindsided—and oh, oh yes, that is blood on her elbow, that is a considerably deep gash. “Oh, shit.”

Adrien feels his eyebrows promptly fly into his hairline, and when Marinette spots this, her cheeks flush. “Ah— _sorry!_  Too much time with Nino,” she winces, a little, but that’s probably because she’s clutching her elbow and, oh, wow, god, that blood is starting to really seep through her sleeve.

“Ah—here,” Adrien flounders, then recovers quickly—he moves efficiently, packing up Marinette’s belongings into her locker while she holds tight to her surprising injury. The locker door closes with a bang loud enough to make him flinch, and then Adrien is changing course by saying, “Let’s head to the nurse.”

Marinette… doesn’t say anything. But she walks with him. When he glances at her, she’s staring straight ahead. They walk in near silence amidst a sparsely-populated hallway, Marinette clutching at her elbow all the while, and Adrien is already recognizing the traces of guilt that usually start to bubble up inside him whenever Marinette’s reticence is concerned. Adrien can’t remember the last time he felt so uncomfortable.

Wait, no—that’s not true. Adrien sighs, long and deep. He knows. 

“Sorry you’re missing your lunch break to come supervise my clumsiness trip,” she offers up, and Adrien immediately wishes he could snatch his sigh right back out of the air. She’s blushing again, which means that Adrien is starting to feel his cheeks warm too, which is _so_ not the direction he wanted this conversation to go.

“Uh,” he starts, and rakes a hand through the hair at the back of his skull. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m sorry you’re missing your lunch break for this trip in the first place. I’m sure we won’t have any problem finding time to eat after we’re done though, and we can always ask the Nurse for a late pass.”

Marinette nods. The conversation dies. Adrien resigns himself to a quiet walk, and as frustrating as it is, he needs to think this through again.

Adrien finds himself exceptionally and confusingly annoyed with Chat Noir.

//

 

The Nurse’s Office is a nine-minute adventure in which Marinette leans against one of the cots while the Nurse makes quick work of her antiseptic and bandages, and Adrien stands awkwardly off to the side near the doorway. Marinette determinedly does not look at him while the nurse pushes up the sleeves of her blazer and chats about little things—more personality and enthusiasm in polite smalltalk than he’s managed to pull from Marinette when it’s just the two of them in… ever, maybe. She blushes all the while. Blushing is contagious.

“Oh dear, that will be Kim again,” says the Nurse, when a particularly loud groan echoes down the hallway, followed by Max’s voice. “He usually pays me a visit around this time of day,” she shares conspiratorially, and finishes patting down the tape that holds the gauze to Marinette’s skin. “Better go meet him in the hallway, before he does even more damage. You’re all set, Marinette, you can go help yourself to lunch now.” And then the Nurse takes off down the hallway, and Adrien and Marinette are left awkwardly alone in the office.

Adrien all but rocks back onto his heels. “So…” he starts. “Cafe?”

She makes a point of dragging her gaze from her elbow to her watch. “Hmm. It might be tight, honestly… Would it be much of a bother to just come eat your lunch at my place?” 

It’s practically the first personal invitation she’s made to him since they practiced for the video game tournament, so of course it’s not a _bother_ , but he has to ask: “Is Nino gonna join?”

She shakes her head, and finally raises her gaze to his. “No, not today.” She tilts her head to the side. “Do you normally eat lunch at home? When we don’t eat at the park together, I mean.” 

“Sometimes.”

She nods. And then, without much further ado, Marinette leans over to retrieve her bag from a nearby chair, and hauls it up with her good arm. He doesn’t miss the wince she makes as she shifts her other arm. Ugh. Not the smoothest start.

“All right,” she says, and the feel of it is so rife with uncertainty that he could kick himself, what is he _doing,_ this is not how Chat Noir would act at _all_ , which is the point, but— 

“Are you still mad at me?” he blurts, because he can’t wait any longer, it’s been almost a _year_ , what is he going to have to do to (get her to act with Adrien the way she acts with _Chat_ , to actually look at him like he's someone she's glad to see, to—) believe him when he says he’s never been sorrier for a terrible first impression in all of his life. For the longest, longest time, Adrien didn’t make that many—he can’t let go of this one. 

Marinette blinks at him. Rapidly, uncertainly, startled.

Shit.

“What?”

“I—just,” Adrien flounders, and oh, wow, how the tables have _turned_. “I just can’t help but notice that… sometimes… it feels like you’re still mad at me.”

Marinette is staring, blank.

Plagg is probably having a field day in his bag.

Ugh. 

“I was just wondering,” Adrien finishes lamely, and his face must be so red, but at least it’s out there now, on the proverbial table, but he hopes to all the Powers of Destruction that be that she will respond _soon_ , because he is dying here, this is an unparalleled pain he has never experienced before—

“Let’s go to my house,” is what she says, wide-eyed but level, and she starts shifting and walking away, even though she won’t stop looking at him like he’s grown a second head. “We should have this conversation while we eat.”

“Oh. Well, I—I didn’t actually mean to just—"

“Adrien,” she breathes, and he stills. “Just—hold on, for five minutes. There’s something we should… talk about.”

Is there a contest for blushing? If so, apparently he needs to be signed up immediately: get him on stage, send in the cameras. Walk him off a plank. 

Either is fine.

“Okay,” he says.

After an eternity of a beat later, Marinette painstakingly shifts her gaze forward, and walks.

Adrien follows, side-by-awkward-side.

//

 


	5. "Where is your bodyguard?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _4/24/17_. hey, wow, i am doing pretty well with this 'update every month' thing?? it's actually completely by accident. we'll see what happens for the rest, haha.
> 
> thanks for the love, everyone! ♡
> 
>  **BETA'd** by the beautiful, glorious **ABIGAIL**. 
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)!

 

//  


They enter through the bakery. 

There’s a line of at least a dozen people, and it’s noisy with clinking porcelain and lunch-rush chatter, but Marinette’s mother still finds a moment to lean over from the cash register to speak with Marinette as they pass by.

”Eating lunch at home today?" she asks, all warmth and pleasant surprise. Her father is laughing loudly across the room with a couple of customers as he fills their paper boxes and deftly ties them up with strings, but he still manages to call a greeting to the two of them from behind the far counter. Even a few of the customers bid Marinette hello. "Is Nino running behind? Where is Alya?"

“Nino and Alya are eating together in the park today,” Marinette answers smoothly, for which Adrien is grateful—for which Adrien is _surprised_ ; Nino hadn’t mentioned his plans, but, then again, _it’s not like you asked him, right?_ —and as Marinette leans over to peck her mother on the cheek, her mom says, "Of course," in a chuckling way that gives Adrien pause.

Or at least it would, if Adrien weren't jolted by Marinette suddenly being already six paces ahead of him. 

"Thank you, Ms. Cheng," Adrien says, in his best Mandarin, and when she beams at him, Adrien is momentarily distracted enough to lose track of where he's supposed to be going. He follows Marinette blindly toward the stairs.

The hush of the apartment’s kitchen is a shock compared to the busy rush below; Adrien can still hear the sounds of the bakery, but everything is muffled. It’s in this strange and far-away almost silence that Adrien realizes: he's been in Marinette’s family’s kitchen a dozen times; he's been in here with everyone all at once, all crowding together and talking over one another in polite, familiar tones; he’s even been in here without Nino, and without Alya, but it has always been with her parents in the kitchen; he’s never quite been in here with just the two of them...

Alone.

Adrien is having trouble thinking of anything more to say, so he just watches as Marinette opens the fridge and starts rummaging.

There are a few pastries on a plate atop the counter. He recognizes one as Chat's favorite flavor, and fights the urge to reach for it; he lets his eyes catch over the personal effects about the kitchen—potted herbs, photographs that have found their way into frames atop cupboards, three pairs of color-coded chopsticks with various designs—ignores the thrum of anxiety in his veins and schools his features until he feels like a professional model in front of the camera, instead of like a boy who really doesn't know what he's doing in a classmate's kitchen in the middle of a school day.

_I might be more grateful for the modeling skills in this case if I didn't feel like such a weirdo for needing them in the first place._

Marinette is pulling a small tray of aluminum-wrapped sandwiches from the fridge, when Adrien speaks.

"Your mom won't mind that I'm eating here?"

Marinette seems to hear the question he is really asking; she sets the sandwiches on the counter, and retrieves two glasses from the cabinet, and looks back at him.

"My mom always makes an extra sandwich or two," Marinette explains. "Someone unexpected usually shows up, so we tend to have food prepped... I think it comes with running a bakery."

Adrien thinks it has more to do with Marinette's family being who they are than what their livelihood is, but he's not really in a position to discuss it.

"I really appreciate it, either way," he says, and means it, then flounders at the inadequacy. "I didn't mean to surprise you and then come eat your food."

"Honestly, Adrien, it's okay. It was an accident. Besides," she adds, thoughtfully, ”it actually happens more than you think."

Adrien wisely keeps his mouth shut.

"Okay," Marinette says, now with two filled water glasses atop the tray of sandwiches. "Let's head up. Grab the door for me, please?"

Adrien almost starts. "We're not eating here? In the kitchen?"

Marinette blinks, and Adrien suddenly wonders if this had been a weird thing to say: is there any weird reason why this would be unusual? He is so not aware of what is normal for other teenaged-households.

"I figured it'd be easier to talk up there," she explains. "My parents are busy with the lunch rush, but they are super skilled at finding unfortunate times to interrupt. You saw a bit of that yourself when you were here for the tournament practice," she says, and then she eyes him, and Adrien knows without a doubt that she is remembering his awkward words from the hallway. _Are you still mad at me?_ Adrien is starting to feel a little more lost than usual. 

"All right," he says, and tries not to look too stiff and detached when he heads up ahead of her. He means to help her with the tray, too, but Marinette floats up the steps with practiced grace. He's always got the impression that she is the clumsy type—not as aware of her limbs as she could be—but maybe that doesn't apply to her space in her room. Come to think of it, Chat's not sure he's ever seen her anything less than totally at home… well. At home. He wonders what that must feel like.

This brief moment of wonder dissipates the moment he surfaces through the trapdoor and sees Marinette plop down onto the floor in the middle of the open space, and _oh._ Shit. Where is he supposed to sit?

She places the tray in front of her, and to his concern, doesn’t provide any other clues as to where he should go.

Adrien glances to the chaise.

“Thanks again,” he blurts, still standing awkwardly by the open trapdoor. Marinette arranges the sandwiches on the tray set before her, places the water glasses to the side, and barely glances up. Adrien’s stomach clenches. 

“It’s no problem,” she says, finally looking toward him. When his feet stick to the floor, he sees the tilt to her brow, the crinkle in between. She starts to look nervous—the kind of nervous he’s used to seeing, which, in a weird way, makes him feel both a little bit better... and a little bit worse.

“Come sit down,” she says.

Years of poise and grace and performing for a camera are what allow Adrien to come to a seated position opposite of Marinette. He sits himself so that Marinette is closer to the trapdoor, in case she wants to leave. If it just so happens that it also means he could theoretically lean back against the side of the chaise, if he wanted to, then, well. It’s just a chaise.

Marinette nudges the tray a centimeter towards him, then lifts her wrapped sandwich without any further pomp. “Bon appétit,” she says, and he has no choice but to follow suit.

A few bites of silence, and the suspense is already doing him in: anticipation rings loudly between Adrien’s ears. Is she thinking about what he blurted out in the hallway? Is she looking for the right words? Is that why she brought him here, and gave him a sandwich? So, that way, when she tells him how very little interest she has in his issues, at least he’s well-fed with hospitality? Something to soften the blow?

 _S_ _top_ , Adrien tells himself. _Stop it_. He can almost hear Plagg’s drawling voice:  _Pull yourself together, kid_.  

He tries. He knows he’s thinking too much.  

One more stray thought passes through: Is it possible that she is actually following his— _Chat’s_ —advice? About mentioning her… absentmindedness?

His stomach is so tied up with knots, it feels worse than the time he caught Plagg tangled up in a mangled ball of thread from his dad’s special stockpile, and if _that_ wasn’t the most awkward and difficult thing to explain to Nathalie, ever, then Adrien doesn’t know what— 

“What do you normally like to eat for lunch?” is what Marinette asks instead, which is such a bizarre question to Adrien that he’s not sure what to do with it. He stops the methodical, tasteless bites of his sandwich, actually, and Marinette must see the confusion on his face because she adds, “It’s just—we always make spares, just in case, and my parents already make what Alya and Nino like, but… I mean, I know you bring cheese to school a lot, but there’s more than just that, right?”

Adrien cannot tell if the immense heat flooding to his face is a sign that it’s turning red, or a sign that he’s turning green. White. Gray.

_Damn you, Plagg._

“Uh… yeah. The cheese snacks, it’s—it’s a model thing.”

Marinette blinks, chews her sandwich with wide eyes. “Really?”

“Yes. Uh, yes. But,” Adrien hurries, “I like other things, too.” He realizes what could have prompted Marinette’s question in the first place. _Oh, shit_. “This is really good,” he rushes to reassure, but it’s all so stilted, and it’s hard to seem really convincing when he actually hasn’t tasted the sandwich at all because of _nerves_ , he doesn’t even know what’s _in_ this sandwich, but that’s not Marinette’s fault, not at all, god, _why_ is he so bad at this?

“Are you sure? Because we might have some cheese downstairs…”

“Oh! No,” Adrien tries to decline as politely and firmly as possible, and _wills_ Plagg to stay the hell where he is and _not. make. a peep._ “This is great, no, that’s okay. There are other things I eat. Besides cheese, that is. Absolutely. I just haven’t really thought about it, much, because the chef usually just serves what my father tells him, or like, what’s in season, or like Marinette I’m sorry but I have to know—did I do something to you?” 

The remains of her sandwich nearly fall from her hands. “What?”

“I just,” blood pounds in his ears, and it occurs to him that he is still uselessly holding his barely-eaten meal, “I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to make it up to you?” Marinette just stares, so Adrien plows ahead. “That is, to say like, how I can fix it. Whatever I did. Am doing.” 

He’s never felt so naked without the suit before.

After too many beats too long, Marinette’s eyes slowly drift down to the sandwich in her hand… like it might have the answers. At this point, he sincerely hopes she finds them in there, between the lettuce, because he is _dying,_ okay, he is dying, here.

“You thought…? Adrien,” she says, to the sandwich. “I’m not mad at you.”

And then she sets the meal down on the tray with deliberate care; Adrien glances down to his own, suddenly not sure what he's supposed to do with it, then hurries to follow suit—just in time for Marinette to swiftly slide the tray completely to the side, out of the space between them, and scoots herself forwards so that she now occupies the space where the sandwiches once occupied.

He hasn’t stopped looking at Marinette this whole time, and he’s feeling like things are very hard to predict right now, so honestly he is just trying not to do anything stupid.

So much for lunch.

“You thought I was mad at you?” Marinette looks him in the eye, and—he feels very small all of a sudden. He’d felt ridiculous, before, in the hallway, because he’d started to wonder if the situation was _worse_ than he’d imagined, and now part of his brain is starting to recognize that she’d disagreed with him ( _I’m not mad at you,_ she said, _I’m not_ ) but it’s not quite all there yet, so even as one part of his brain tries to cheer out in hopeful optimism that perhaps things _aren’t_ as dire as he’d expected, maybe he’s still just as much of an idiot in either case, which maybe isn’t something to worry about as much, but is still something to— “Why?”

“You don’t talk to me,” he hears himself say, but it’s very distant, because his brain keeps staring at the minimal half a meter or so between their faces and screaming _close close close close close_! “I mean, you do, but only when you have to. You used to avoid me a lot more but now that you and Nino are closer I figured you just figured that it’d be easier if we all spent more time together, and even when we spend time together now I think that maybe you’re really only doing it for Nino. And like, you’re nice to everyone, because that’s what you do, and because you’re Class President and maybe you think it’s part of your responsibility to help the class—” 

“You think I spend time with you because I’m Class _President_?”

“Well, no, I—okay, yes, maybe, a little bit? Wait, no, _wait_ , it’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m just saying that if that were the reason then I’d understand, but I’d also want to ask more about what happened, before you become Class President, you know, a while ago, that made it so you didn’t come near me so that I can… fix it.”

The awkwardness is so thick Adrien might as well be drowning in it.

 

Slowly, Marinette shifts: just slightly, she drops her shoulders forward, until her forearms come to rest on her thighs. She contemplates the stripes on his shirt, the white collar, and finally, his eyes. Adrien only just realizes that he’s leaned forward too—shoulders dropped, forearms atop thigh muscles—when he realizes how level his view is of the pink flush that is rapidly staining Marinette’s cheeks.

His stomach bottoms out.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her smile is all wobbly, oh god, if he’s _offended_ her— “I didn’t know that’s… what you were thinking. Or for how long. If I’d have known…"

 _Just forget,_ Adrien almost says aloud, _I said anything. (_ But he had to, and he’s not sure when Marinette might have broached something, had he waited.) (He needed to say this today.)

(Right?)

“You—gave me your umbrella,” she tells him, eye-to-eye, striking through his tangle of thoughts, and Adrien has not the slightest idea why, but he suddenly feels like _he_ should be blushing, too.

So he does.

“I—what?” 

“You—”

And then she breathes deep, looks up to the ceiling—the intensity is interrupted, but his heart is still pounding, his stomach is still swimming, has he like, actually lost sensation in his fingers, what—and then when she looks back at him it’s like she’s staring him down, all ferocity and red-faced determination, and Adrien is quite honestly a little scared. He’s almost positive it shows on his face.

“I stopped being mad at you when you came to apologize, that first week, and gave me your umbrella,” she says, and the words rush over Adrien’s ears, but he can hear the deliberateness in them, the intentionality that is actually quite terrifying to behold in someone who’s only in junior high, the feeling that he’s being spoken to by a force greater than just the wisp of a girl people assume her to be. “When you _apologized_ ,” she repeats, and waits.

And waits.

He’s not quite there yet.

He tries to bridge the stories.

“I… I _thought_ that things were okay? Between us. After that, when I explained about the gum and you didn’t yell at me again and I gave you my umbrella and it was raining, but like… We didn’t become friends,” and then Adrien cuts himself off, a touch too quickly, from saying the rest.

No need, he decides. It’s already awkward enough as it is.

The blush fades to a steady thrum: not quite burning, but still there, glowing and fading in the vulnerable space of Marinette’s otherwise empty room, and, wow. This is an unmitigated disaster. Plagg is having a field day, he’s sure, but Adrien will still give him the leftovers of his damn sandwich, no doubt, the lucky Bad Luck Fur-ball, because he definitely doesn’t have any appetite now.

“Adrien,” she’s looking at him, when he musters his gaze back upwards, and it’s so hard to read the expression on her face— _is that because you’re not reading her as Chat or because she’s reading you as Adrien?_ —“I have to tell you something. And I’m sorry I… didn’t tell you before? But also not sorry. I’m not, even though I think… I think it will make you uncomfortable.”

Is there literally any worse possible scenario he could have anticipated? _And you thought you wanted the truth so badly,_ he thinks, staring blankly, in the brief space of breath that it takes Marinette to gather herself up, and say, “I had feelings for you.”

 _So badly_ , his brain plays on repeat, then catches, stutters, falls, because.

Because?

“I avoided spending time around you because I, I. _Ugh_. Because I had really strong feelings for you, and I didn’t know how to handle them, _clearly_ , because I turned into a mess whenever you were around, so rather than try to work through them, I was too much of a chicken to say anything or, or, or anything, and now that I know what you _really_ thought about my spastic-ness, I just—I am so sorry, Adrien.” 

She’s looking at him, and—and it hurts? It hurts to look at how sorry and chagrined she looks, how guilty and disappointed she feels and, _are you kidding_ , did he literally not _just_ promise himself _just the other night_ that he wasn’t going to inflict this kind of discomfort on her ag—wait. what.

“What?”

Color blooms back across her cheeks; Adrien’s burns all the same.

Marinette resettles into her seated position on the hardwood with a flurry of breath and wispy bangs and hands flying into the air, and then: “ _Ugh_ , okay, I’m sorry, this is gonna be super inelegant, but whatever: I liked you. I liked you a lot, Adrien, to the point that it was, like, super inconvenient, and apparently actually really hurtful, because I liked you so much that I couldn’t talk straight or look straight at you or anything. And I had no idea that, that the whole time you thought my weirdness was because of _the gum_ , or who you are, or what your job is, or who your childhood friends are, or whatever, because the whole time I too busy trying to deal with the fact that I devolved into even more of a complete and total spaz whenever you were around—and the clumsiness intensified by like twenty times, it was _awful_ —so I was so caught up in my own, like, _crush_ on you, that I wasn’t even able to see that you thought I’d… I should stop talking now.”

It makes no difference, really, because her voice is still all he hears.

I had feelings for you, she said.

She liked him.

 _She liked me._ Holy cow. _She_ liked _me, liked me?_ That’s—that’s impossible. Wouldn’t Adrien know if someone actually _liked_ him? And he’s not talking about the people who like _Adrien Agreste_ , the model, with all the fan mail and the autographs and the fawning; he’s talking about Adrien, the classmate, the awkward teenager; he’s talking about Marinette, who always speaks her mind and stands up for others and is loved by everyone and actually cares about people and _she liked me_ , his heart leaps, because the implications of this begin to take root, begin to fly, because holy _cow_ , she _liked_ him, she actually really liked him, she _liked_ —

Oh.

Adrien’s face falls. “You… _liked_ me?”

The bubble that’d been expanding inside him promptly pops; he feels it, like a needle stabbing the bursting feeling wide open and all of it comes rushing out in one swift rush of disappointment. Marinette’s expression, for some reason, looks just as deflated.

“ _Ugh!_ ” Marinette quickly covers her face with hands. Her face is so red, and she looks so miserable that Adrien can only match. “I know! This is so embarrassing now, oh my god, I—it was only for this year, I promise! And I _know_ that’s not how you’re supposed to treat people you care about at _all,_ so no wonder you couldn’t tell, no wonder you thought I, I, I was upset with you, or whatever, I’m so sorry. I’m rambling. Okay, I’m finished, I swear, just, first—let me say: Adrien, I _did_ have a crush on you, and now you know, and if you can still forgive me somehow for how weird this is and how awkward this is, then I promise that I don’t even ever have to mention it again—I’m totally fine now, I swear. I’m practically one-hundred percent over it. I _am_ one-hundred percent over it. I actually realized what was happening like a few weeks ago, and so that’s when I… please don’t worry about it,” she pleads, embarrassment clouding her features, but her eyes are still so bright with that same wave of determination, the one that slams out into the atmosphere wherever she looks. “I know this is weird, but… it doesn’t have to stay weird. Right?”

_Doesn’t have to… stay… weird…_

“A few weeks ago?” Adrien hears himself echo. He’s piecing it all together, or trying to, but _what the hell happened a few weeks ago?_ Too many things to pinpoint, that’s what. “What… made you stop?”

Marinette face squinches. Their mingled, shared embarrassment is still thick enough to choke, but Marinette forces herself to speak. “Actually… I kinda learned that you… like someone else. And,” her voice evens out, loses its traces of discomfort, “from what I could tell, it didn’t really look like it was gonna change anytime soon. Once I realized that, it kinda… all happened from there.”

“Someone else?” Adrien blurts, as his stomach jumps. “ _Who?_ ” 

Marinette blinks at him. “Well… Ladybug.”

Oh.

“Oh,” he says.

Right.

“It’s okay, though,” she rushes to reassure, and—she’s still so close, and her cheeks are still faintly pink, but she’s starting to look more in control now. She’s looking at him with the same sort of laser-point ferocity he sees her show with Alya and Nino, with a glint in her eye and a shine of concentration to her gaze. “I totally get it, really. And I’m sort of glad, actually, because now—this way we can better friends. Right? I mean, if you want to. I’m still awkward, but at least now it’s a friendship-awkward. Ugh. I’m sorry this is so messy,” she says again, the tone all changed, and Adrien glances up from where he’s been staring at the floor, and it occurs to him that it’s been too quiet for too long. A burst of panic flashes through him.

Marinette peers at him, tentative and patient and strained. Carefully, she asks, “Is this… _too_ weird?”

Adrien doesn’t know what to say.

“I was afraid that you hated me,” he admits, slowly, because using the word _hate_ to describe his fears is a scary step; it is a much stronger word than he’s used to letting himself consider, even inside his own head. Now that it’s out, though—now that he sees her reaction to the truth of what’s been eating away at him—he knows that that’s what the fear was. That’s it. He’d thought that, even if she might have forgiven him for hurting her, she still hadn’t trusted him.

Until five minutes ago, he’d believed she hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.

Adrien tries to wrap his mind around it all.

“So,” he finishes. “I’m just... still trying to process the fact that you… don’t?”

He thinks that Marinette’s going to cover her face again—everything about her screams movement, and reaction, and a tangled-up sort of distress and call to action—but after a heavy, thoughtful pause, Marinette scoots even _closer_ to him on the floor, and looks right in his face.

“Adrien,” she says, heavy with bright promise. “I want to be your friend.”

The blush on her cheeks is gone.

On his own—he’s not so sure.

“You do?”

“Yes,” she says, without a trace of unsteadiness. “I should have made it clearer earlier, but I’d really like to do better now. I’d like to be your friend. A good one.”

He doesn’t know what to say. His face is burning.

“I’d… like to be your friend, too.” And he adds, probably foolishly, “I’ve wanted to be your friend since I met you.”

Adrien watches the faintest trace of surprise flicker through her gaze. “Really?” she asks, light and pleased. Adrien’s heart swoops into his stomach.

“Yeah,” he says, mouth dry. “Of course.”

Her smile slants wry, and Adrien blinks a few times, because it almost, _almost_ feels like the way she moves with Chat Noir—the teasing way. Is that too much to hope for? It’s probably too much.

“Are you sure?” she quips, and she _is_ teasing, at least a little bit. “I know I have macaroons and all, but I fall down a lot. And I do things without thinking about the consequences a lot. I trip over, too, and I’ve been told I can be pretty dramatic.”

 _By who?_ Adrien wonders. _Did Alya tell you that?_

_Nino?_

“I still don’t really know how to act around people my age,” he admits, because if she’s going to lay out her quirks, then he figures he should, too. “Before I started school, I spent most of my time talking to adults.” _Or listening to them,_ more like, _following their orders,_ but he doesn’t need to go there, not just yet. “I don’t really know what’s weird, or okay, or ordinary.” 

Marinette’s smile softens. There’s a gleam in her eye that he can’t place, but he likes the feel of it. “I’m not really the expert on what’s _ordinary,_ but I know ‘weird’ pretty well, so maybe we can share notes.”

Unbidden, thoughts of their time in the library not too long ago come surfacing. It’s still tainted with embarrassment, but it’s weak enough now that he thinks that soon enough he’ll be able to laugh about it. Adrien releases a quirk of a grin. “So we’ll consider it just another study session topic?”

A small laugh escapes her, and Adrien collects each sound, gathering them into his memory like gemstones. “Sure,” she humors him. “Just like biology.”

“Or your mechanical engineering,” he adds, and regrets it as he watches confusion pass over her face—he’s given her pause, and the last thing he wants to do is lose their momentum—but after a moment she seems to remember what he’s talking about, and she says, “Oh, yeah. That, too.”

Sensing that something in the atmosphere could change unless he’s careful, Adrien tries to seek out the feeling that had lifted him up to such giddiness just a few moments before: time for another admission.

“I have something to tell you, too,” Adrien rushes in, before he can think twice about it—this is the time for embarrassing truths, this much is clear. “You know how I joined your table at the library the other day? That was me, trying to be friendly.”

She cocks her head. “But you’re always friendly.”

“Okay, yeah, but, _no_ —that was me, like,” how does he say this, dear god, “that was me trying to…” What? Investigate? Get closer? Be _really_ friendly? “I wanted to try to make it so we could be as comfortable around each other as you are with Nino and Alya. Or maybe not _as_ close, you know, because, like, you’re best friends—with Alya, I mean, but—”

Marinette is looking at him very closely. He’s not sure what she’s thinking, but he can see how she’s feeling. He _really_ doesn’t like making Marinette feel bad.

His stomach twists.

“Could you do me a favor?” he asks quickly, very delicately, before Marinette could hope to argue his point. “Could we maybe… not mention this to Nino? And Alya? I don’t… really want them to like. Read too much into this. You know how they are.” 

Marinette’s smile softens in a way he’s not really used to seeing. “Yeah,” she agrees, gentle. “I know.”

He’s scrambling for something else to add, maybe to redeem himself a little—maybe that was _too_ deep an admission? Wait, no, how could that compare with what Marinette had shared, holy cow, _what Marinette had shared!!?_ —when she strikes through the unsteady silence once more with, “We were so awkward.” 

He grasps onto the truth like a lifeline. “So awkward. I was too worried about saying something to make you not want to talk to me anymore.”

Marinette laughs, surprised and amused and bright and a little ridiculous, and Adrien smiles back, feeling easier at the broken uneasiness, imagines scooping up the fallen peals of her laughter like like petals. He grins, and she says, “I was so proud of myself! I felt like I was finally able to actually talk to you like a real person, instead of just stuttering at you!”

He grins, because now all of the shared distress seems sort of funny, in retrospect, even though it still feels a little worrisome, “I thought you were treating me like I was some boring professional.”

“Adrien!” she laughs. “You’re the one who keeps mentioning that I’m Class President!”

“I know!” and he’s laughing too now, laughing because it’s true, laughing because it’s so true and uncomfortable, “I know, I just… I don’t know. I thought maybe it would be better to talk to you about stuff that was like… safe ground.”

Marinette smiles at him, a tad _too_ knowingly. “Don’t you mean common ground?”

 _No_ , his gut protests, _because we don’t really have any yet,_ but he ignores it, because he’s not _supposed_ to feel sad right now. “Well… we’re both in the same class, but that’s not really a _foundation_ for friendship, is it?”

Marinette grins a very Chat-like smile. Adrien’s stomach flips. “It can be a nice start,” she says, knowingly.

“Er… well, I also don’t really know anything about being Class President,” he excuses, which is a stupid idea, honestly, why is he _trying_ to _hand_ her reasons not to want to hang out with him?  _Are you literally trying to sabotage exactly what you just worked so hard to build in the first place?!_ What is he doing? And yet, he can’t quite stop. “Like, we play the same video games—or, at least, we used to—but I don’t really know anything else that we share, or have in common, or—“ 

“Adrien,” she halts him with a hand on his arm, and his skin lights up. He can tell by her face that she’s pretty close to laughing out loud at him, and he’s really sort of grateful that she doesn’t. “That’s okay. You become better friends by finding that stuff, no? I know plenty of things we have in common, but I’m sure there’s plenty more—stuff we don’t know about yet.”

Her urge to laugh subsides, but a smile lets out, and Adrien is warm and nervous and not really sure what to do about it.

“We’ll find it sooner or later, yeah? I’m not worried.” 

He’s not really that worried anymore either, to be honest, but he doesn’t know how to let this residual anxiety _go._  “That… makes sense.” 

“You’ll see,” she grins, and her world is back to shimmering _confidence_ , and Adrien wonders where it comes from: her parents? Having so many friends? Her natural talent and creativity? Encouragement from her teachers and classmates and loved ones? Her quick cleverness and eye for design?

“There’s one more thing,” Adrien adds, because he _has_ to; this is the time for it all to come out onto the table, right? Or, well. The floor, maybe. _And maybe…_

 _Not everything_.

“Oh?”

“The truth is… I don’t really know much about fashion design, even though I’m a part of the industry,” he says, and watches as her eyes light up its mention.

“Was that a part of it too?” she wonders aloud. “Inviting me… to one of your dad’s shows?”

“Yeah,” he admits, a tad sheepish. “I… wanted to invite you sooner, actually. But I was afraid it’d feel… I don’t know. Like bribery?”

“Bribery? Into becoming your friend?”

“Maybe? Does that sound ridiculous?”

Marinette smiles wide. “Just about as ridiculous as entering a _Ultimate Mecha Strike III_ tournament only just so I had an excuse to spend time with you.”

Adrien’s eyes widen. “Really?” 

Marinette’s laughter carries a bit of sharpness to it: it stings Adrien, just a bit, because he immediately assumes he’s asked a stupid question—until he recognizes that it carries the same spotty self-deprecation that Nino’s laughter tends to hold. Adrien blinks.

“Oh, yeah. That’s not even the most ridiculous, either. I could definitely go on,” she admits, laughing at herself, “And I am positive that, sooner or later, I _will_ —I’ve got plenty of stories, if you wanna hear them, but,” she glances at the clock, “I think we’ve used up all the lunch time we have for today.”

Oh, shit. _Lunch_.

Adrien looks down at this barely-touched meal, courtesy of the ever-welcoming Dupain-Cheng family, and feels a strike of guilt whip down his spine: he has zero appetite. “Er…” 

Marinette giggles, and Adrien’s gaze shoots up. Is this… okay, then? Them? Are things… okay?

“Don’t worry,” she assures him, and she’s already wrapping the sandwiches back up and starting to clean up. “You can take it with you, or stop by after school and take it for the road. I’m not kidding about letting my parents know what you like to eat either, by the way. The longer you hold out, the more they’ll hound me, so it’ll be better if you just fess up now. Also, what’s the kind of cheese you like? My parents have actually been looking for some new ideas for the turnover selection, and they love picking out flavors from Nino and Alya’s favorite tastes, so it’s only a matter of time before they ask—” 

“Hey,” Adrien gazes up to where Marinette has stood. He hasn’t moved. “Thanks. I’m… really glad. That this happened.” 

Marinette blinks down at him. There’s a flash of something he can’t really place, and then she smiles down at him, all friendly and surprised and pleased, and Adrien’s just like a mirror today, because he can’t help but keep matching her.

“Me too,” she says, quietly. They grin. It lasts for a weirdly long time, but he doesn’t mind. Then Marinette shakes herself free of the sappy friendship warp, and sets the sandwich tray down on her desk, but Adrien still can’t shake the giddiness, and then Marinette turns back around to him and holds out a hand to help him up. Adrien still can’t believe today happened.

“How close are we cutting it?” he asks, and reaches up. Their hands connect, and Adrien is smiling like an idiot. It’s fine. He’s fine. “Do we need a late pass?”

Marinette’s curious, distressed gaze glances once more at the clock on the wall, heedless of the way their hands are still holding despite no one’s attempt to actually _move_ , and Adrien’s whole arm tingles, and there’s too many sensations happening right now that he just lets himself continue to sit placidly on the floor, holding onto Marinette’s outstretched hand, making absolutely no move to actually hoist himself up. 

“We might be running in just in time for the bell,” Marinette muses, then shrugs: it jostles Adrien’s arm. She turns, and her grin is both sheepish and a touch unapologetic. “Wouldn’t be my first time, and probably won’t be my last.”

Adrien is about to say something—something cheeky; he can get away with that now, right? A little?—but that’s when Marinette tugs on his hand and Adrien uses the force to pull himself to finally standing—or he would have, had a giant quake in the earth not completely thrown them both off-balance and sent their precarious figures hurdling to the floor.

Adrien’s joints hit the hardwood in a distinctly unpleasant way, but it hardly matters, because it means he catches the brunt of Marinette’s fall, _and yet_ —

The sound Marinette makes as her injured elbow connects with the floor is beyond awful.

Adrien steadies Marinette’s head against his chest as she cradles her elbow through the rest of the resulting quake—the walls and floors oscillate with ridiculous speed and vigor, toppling items off her shelves, her desk, slipping pictures from her wall. Finally, the shaking stops—and that’s when Adrien hears the screams. 

“An akuma,” he breathes, staring at the sky out Marinette’s window with wide eyes. He can’t see anything unusual just yet, but an akuma that shakes up _Paris_ , of all places, can’t be good. Adrien glances down to where Marinette is curled against him, and—oh.

"Are you okay?" he rasps, and at first he thinks the breathlessness is from all the stabbing fear—and it _might_ be—but maybe it’s also because she is hunched and resting atop his lungs. His hands slip to her shoulders. She's wincing and clutching her elbow. 

Then, feebly, with a fiery curl of anger: "That… _really_ hurt." 

Adrien can hear crashing and screaming and yelling, but the trail seems to be moving farther away. He's too busy looking at Marinette, waiting to see what she'll do next, trying to figure out what should happen. Marinette opens her eyes and looks down into his. They feel very wide. 

"Are you okay?" she asks, lying on top of him.

"I'm okay," he answers, automatically. His neck aches from the angle. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Marinette says. "Are... I think I'm okay."

"Okay."

"Okay... Adrien."

"Yes?"

"Could you help me up, please?"

"Yeah," he says, and immediately lifts himself up to a sitting position, lifting her with him while she nurses the bandaged gash on her arm. Has it opened up again? "Yeah, of course. Here."

He helps her to unsteady feet, half-expecting another quake to come raking through. He opens his mouth to ask again, _are you okay_ , then startles when he hears it being shouted from below.

"We're okay!" Marinette calls back through the trapdoor. Adrien vaguely hears her mother about something about going across the street to help the neighbors get back inside their apartments, as well as orders to stay inside. He watches Marinette call back to them, but he doesn't hear a word; he realizes he and Marinette have not let go of each other.

Adrien stares at Marinette's profile. He watches the thoughts and curiosities churn behind her eyes. In a show of exceptionally awful timing, Adrien recalls the night he last visited Marinette’s room—the way they’d parted. For a moment, Adrien forgets who he's supposed to be. 

( _Chat Noir had been about to do something very, very reckless… hadn’t he?_ )

And then a striking, jarring, unavoidable thought: Chat Noir has somewhere to be.

Right now. 

“Ugh,” Marinette says, glaring out the window. Adrien realizes that, with all of the nonsense outside, this must mean the students are off the hook for the rest of the school day... students are probably running home, taking cover. It was definitely a good thing Marinette came home for lunch. She’ll be in the perfect spot to wait out the akuma attack while…

While.

Marinette is staring out the window, and as Adrien watches her, he realizes that this is the first time, the very first, when he hasn’t wanted to immediately rush off to face an akuma.

 _Wouldn't it be nice_ , he wonders, _if Adrien could stay?_ If Adrien could wait out an akuma attack in Marinette's bedroom? _Wouldn't that be…?_  

 _That... would be nice_ , he lets himself admit, _but that's not how it is_.

Adrien tries to crack a smile.

“Guess we won’t be needing the late pass, huh?"

Her eyes swivel to him and—it’s sort of amazing, isn’t it, when you learn someone you _thought_ was mad at you isn’t actually mad at you and then they look at you and suddenly the relief is enough to punch you in the face—and then she cracks her little half-smile, the one she shows to Chat a lot, and Adrien’s stomach bursts into butterflies.

The relief is incredible.

“I, uh… I need to go,” Adrien tells her, without further ado—because he needs to catch up to the akuma before it gets too far, doesn’t want to keep Ladybug waiting any longer than he has to—even if she’s not really been his favorite person to spend time with lately; because he needs her, and she needs him, and they’re a _team_ , and Paris needs them— “I should head back to, you know. The mansion. Call the Gorilla.” 

But his feet don’t move.

“It’s okay,” Marinette looks up at him, and everything is soft, but it feels like she’s a bright light beaming. “I’ll be all right.”

Adrien hadn’t even realized he’d been worrying until the words come from her mouth, but as soon as he hears them the reality of it hits him in the gut. “Are you sure?”

She—she actually punches him on the arm. Lightly. Not at all the way he sees her slug Nino sometimes, when they’re off in their own little world, but enough to rock Adrien on his heels. And it's only here, _now_ , that she steps away. Has he been holding her this whole time? Had she let him?

"I’m already home,” she replies, and her eyes are all _matter-of-fact_ but her smile is all _don’t you know who I am?_ and the answer is yes—yes, he does. 

“I know,” Adrien says, quickly, but the truth is: he really isn’t sure what just happened, or where they stand, or _what this is_. He’s not sure if this lunch meeting is ending with an open invitation, or if it’s just a one-time-reconciliatory glitch, or, or anything. He’s not ready to leave yet: not this conversation, this house, this person that he feels like he _only just got to—_  

“Hey,” she says, head tilting to the side, and when he glances down at the strange sensation on his arm, he sees that she’s put her hand there. “ _You’re_ the about to cross town.” She considers. “Where is your bodyguard?”

 _Outside the school, where I left him,_ thinks Adrien, along with, _Oops_.

“Just a few steps away,” he says. “I’ll find him in no time,” he lies.

“Okay, good,” Marinette says, then pushes at him, a little, with the hand that’s still on his arm. “Text me when you get home safe, okay?”

 _Text me,_ his brain plays on repeat. _Text me_.

“ _Go_ ,” she laughs, and pushes him closer to the door, but there is an undercurrent of urgency to her voice now. “Before it’s too dangerous to get back.”

“You’ll stay inside, right?” Adrien hears himself asking, and he can’t help but wonder if it’s just another tactic to stall, if it’s because he wants to _know_ without a doubt while he’s out there that Marinette is safe inside her warm family home atop the bakery... If he plans to come back.

Later.

“Uh, where else would I need to go in the middle of an akuma attack? I’ll be fine.”

"You sure?"

"Adrien," she laughs, and all but shoves him, using only her good arm. "Yes! Now hurry!"

The trapdoor opens, and Adrien climbs halfway down the ladder and turns back around, only to find that Marinette is crouching on all floors just at eye level. He is stalling now. He knows it.

"I'll text you," he promises, because she'd asked him to, didn't she? It's like the lucky charm bracelet all over again—a reason to creep back into her awareness, her thoughts, her time. "Whenever I get home. Later." 

Marinette blinks in surprise, then smiles at him, and his knees are all weird and wobbly because of the adrenaline and the unfamiliar ladder, and she says, “Okay."

"You'll stay here right? You'll be safe?" 

“ _Yes_ , I’ll be fine, don't forget to text me, now _go!_ "

One last flash of a grin, and then Adrien ducks down and takes off.

 

//

 

He stops in the first deserted alley he finds, at least two blocks away from the Dupain-Cheng bakery. Plagg flies out the second his fingers touch the collar of his shirt, and the kwami’s grin is distinctly sly; Adrien meets his annoying cat-grin with a reproving glare.

“Save it,” Adrien deadpans, but they both recognize it for the plea that it really is. “We don’t exactly have time for your commentary.” 

“Oh? So you _expect_ a commentary?” One of Plagg’s sharp little teeth gleams over the black hole of his mouth. “On what, dare I ask?”

“Nice try,” Adrien grins at him, holding up his ring. “But I’m in too good a mood—not even your cheeky, catty comments will dent this.” 

“I beg your pardon, _sir_ , who are you calling _catty?_ ”

“Plagg,” grins Adrien, wickedly; already more than half-way to Chat. “ _Transform me_.”

 

//

 

It takes less than seventeen seconds to realize that Chat Noir is feeling pretty distinctly on top of the world. 

Until. 

Until he’s soaring over rooftops, gliding over alleyways, coursing through the veins of Paris… and he realizes: Marinette had ( _holy cow _—__ ) liked Adrien. And now that’s he’s learned about it, it’s already over.

And that sucks.

It also doesn’t change… much of anything. Well. A little. Because, maybe, perhaps—Adrien would have liked to have _known_ , at least, that maybe… someone was actually interested in him? As a person? That would have been nice. To know, earlier. It might have been nice to know that Marinette didn’t just think he was some stuck-up spoiled snob with a fancy narcissistic job and a famous father and a rich house and and. Whatever. 

He wishes he would have been smart enough to figure it out earlier.

Adrien tries to comfort himself with the fact, however, that perhaps it’s better that he hadn’t known; maybe he would have destroyed his and Marinette’s chances of getting to know one another, irrevocably, had she revealed herself earlier? Adrien hardly knew how to react to her admissions _today_ —what if he’d faced a completely different confession, months ago? What if he, Adrien Agreste, had been forced to gently explain to Marinette, in- _person_ , in the first true, honest conversation so many weeks after that stupid debacle on his first day of school—that he didn’t actually return her feelings?

(Not as Adrien.) (Not as Chat Noir.)

That he couldn’t.

Chat Noir spots a flash of red and black in the distance of the rooftops. _Damn_ , he grits his teeth. _So fast_. So precise. So efficient.

Like always.

 _But wait,_ whispers little voice in the back of his mind, the one that sounds super optimistic, the one that sounds a little like Marinette and a little like Alya and a little like Nino. _This is okay… Now you and Marinette can actually be friends_. (As Chat Noir.) (As Adrien.)

Chat forges ahead.

 

//

 

It’s completely to be expected, he thinks. 

Ladybug and Chat Noir are awkward. Chat Noir is distracted. Chat Noir, who had started this battle on a particularly high high-note, is now annoyed.

Because Ladybug seems to be in an especially good mood today.

 _And so is he_ , isn’t he, _he still is_ , right?

But like.

Seeing her so genuinely happy makes him wonder… what is _she_ so happy about? (Why can’t they _both_ just be happy?) Why does he have to wonder so hard? Why does this deeply-rooted anxiety start to curl inside him at the sight of her so bright and unaware and fiercely excited to see him—meanwhile he has the feeling that she could have been just as content if she’d not seen him today at all?

What the _hell_ , he is _happy_ that she’s happy, okay, he _wants_ her to be happy.

This is stupid. _Just forget about it. Remember why you were so damn over the moon this afternoon in the first place. She doesn’t owe you anything._

 _And maybe_ , he thinks, quite frankly, watching the rather specific curl of her smile with a sickening churn to his gut. _Maybe you don’t want to know what it is, anyway._ _Stop wondering_ , he tells himself, in the same breath, that he wonders—

Is it always going to be like this?

From now on?

 

//

 

Because he’s not really sure that he can do that.

 

//

 

“OKAY!” Nino bursts through her trapdoor feeling like a motherfucking Whack-a-Mole, he swears to god, “I AM HERE, WHAT’S THE DEAL.”

Marinette’s voice, or a horribly morose sound that is quite possibly _emanating_ from a Marinette-shaped creature, drops down from the loft. 

“Sorry, you're gonna have to grumble a bit louder, I couldn't quite hear you through the melodrama? Tikki, what's up?”

Suddenly, she's at his shoulder. She sighs. “Hi, Nino. It's been… quite a day.”

Something groans from above.

“You mean—more than the Milkshake Earthquake akuma guy?”

Tikki looks up toward the loft; Nino’s eyes follow. He can't see anything, tucked back into the corner as Marinette presumably is, but he's never been up there before, and he doesn't think today is the day to start.

“You should hear it from her,” Tikki says, loud enough that Marinette must hear her, too. “Did you bring any snacks?” she blinks.

“Did I bring any snacks? Tikki, what do you take me for?”

“The best, clearly!” And then she nips a kiss and a nuzzle to his cheek, which is so weird, and the coolest thing ever, and when the hell did his life get this way.

“Marinette, I brought you treats too but—oh. You left your phone down here. You left your phone down here and it's… buzzing? That's not Alya’s ringtone? Do you want me to check who's messaging you, or…? Is that a ‘yes’ groan or a ‘no’ groan? I’mma take it as a ‘just do it’ groan because I know your notifications are set to hiding messages and only showing the contact who it's—holy shit, it's Adrien. You have four unopened messages from Adrien? You also haven’t actually opened my messages since your last reply, thank you very much, but. Hold on. Is there a group project I don't know about?”

Marinette lets out a noise that is quite closer to a sigh, and closer to herself, but still very far away, and loud, and why is Tikki dropping crumbs on his shoulder.

Nino looks questioningly to Tikki. He glances warily to the phone. _Oh, man._  

“Is she like this because of Adrien?”

“Oh no,” Tikki replies easily. “She's like this because of _Chat Noir_.”

“It’s a mess!” she groans, and it sounds very much like she is hiding under… her pillow?

Nino snatches a bag of cookies from his school bag, then lets the backpack fall to the floor with a determined thump.

“Tikki,” Nino declares, his powers thrumming. “Let's go.”

“Aye, aye,” Tikki chirps gleefully.

Cookies and friendship in hand, Nino climbs up the ladder.

 

//

 

"You're acting particularly dramatic this evening," Nino munches on a cookie. He's leaning against the wall that shelters the long edge of her bed, with his socked feet just dangling over the ledge of the loft. Marinette has only briefly emerged from her pillow cocoon-cave for a brief fifteen seconds to demand that he not put his shoes on the bedspread, but come on; he's not an _animal_. "I am concerned, because normally your melodrama contains a lot more flowcharts and timelines and thought bubbles containing nightmarish, outlandish, and impossible outcomes. So far, all you have done is hide from your phone?"

"I'm not hiding," she proclaims, the effect of which is marginally diminished by the fact that she is still, in fact, hiding beneath her pillow. "I am... planning."

"For what, exactly?"

"What I'm supposed to say."

"To who? Chat Noir? Adrien?"

"To both of them." She emerges from her dark, pillowcased-cavern of solitude. She sits adjacent to him, leaning against the headboard. Sighs, "To either of them."

Nino watches her curiously. "What happened?"

"I'm... not sure I have it in me to explain it all over again just yet, actually? Between talking with Adrien and ripping open my elbow, practically, and fighting off an earthquake akuma, I just…”

“You need a nap.”

Marinette huffs a laugh. “I think I was trying. But homework doesn’t really allow for that. Not to mention, I’m going back out on patrol tonight, and then by the time I started to wrap my head around all the things I had to do, Adrien texted me, and I just… just know that Adrien and I talked today. Things feel... a little different now?” Amends, more firmly, " _Very_ different now." 

Nino tilts his head. “Different how?”

“Like… I think we might actually have become friends."

Nino blinks. "Weren't you already?"

Marinette shrugs, clutches the pillow in her lap. "We were… friendly. But I could never talk to him well enough to actually be a good one. I mean, a month ago, I _liked_ to believe that we were… But because of how awkward we were, he didn't think so... it explains a lot actually. And I'm realizing more and more all the time how little I actually knew about him, before. So I'm glad he said something today.” She takes a long moment to think. Then Marinette straightens up against the headboard, pinpoints her gaze onto him. “Did you know he was going to say something to me today?”

“Ha! Yeah, right,” Nino scoffs. “Like I have any idea what anyone is going to do these days.” 

 _Least of all Adrien_ , Nino thinks, chewing on a cookie that’s suddenly tasteless.

Marinette smirks at him. “That’s not true and you know it. You’re plenty good at predicting stuff. It’s what’s makes you such a good Battle Buddy.”

Marinette… actually just used his self-coined term. Battle Buddy. She used it. Out loud. Sincerely. With only minimal teasing.

 _What_.

He wondered if she'd actually be down for actually considering the top-secret 'Best Battle Buds' matching keychain set he'd offhandedly suggested the other day, in passing. (" _You know—as a future design project for which you can pursue to better fill the endless and limitless abundance of free time, you know, because you have_ so _much of that_ ," as he'd said so, cheekily, for which the rest of the evening had seen him sporting a shit-eating grin and a near-bruise on his skull for the most  _extreme_ noogie he'd ever received in all his days.) (They could totally pass it off as a gamer thing.) (Come on, this is exactly the precise level of  _nerd_ and  _lame_ to actually be  _cool_.) ( _Marinette, do it, pleeeeeeese_.) 

Who knows. Maybe she would?

"I'd... been thinking of talking to him anyway,” she continues on, heedless of Nino’s rioting emotions. “About the whole thing. But I _knew_ it was gonna be awkward, so I wasn't really in any hurry. But… after everything we talked about, I'm glad we cleared it up." Her smile softens, and she reaches between for her phone, which lies between them atop the covers. "I should reply now. Can you give me a sec?"

Nino nibbles on cookies while Marinette types. Unlike with her texts to Alya, she does narrate her text aloud.

Nino chews. 

"Do you think you're... starting to have feelings for Adrien again?"

Marinette considers. Then, firmly, "No. I don’t think so. I know why I liked him for so long. It would... be really easy to let myself think about him that way again… but the truth is, we’re not really good at talking to each other just yet, are we? Realizing how much we messed up _before_ made me realize that we wouldn’t really have worked out very well, if I had tried to confess any earlier. Maybe it would have worked out further down the line…”

Nino hears the, “But…?”

“ _But_ ,” Marinette admits. “I kind of have another problem. A bigger problem. A vaguely cat-shaped problem."

" _Vaguely?_ "

"Because, I think," Marinette musters the courage, the dignity, the reality, "that... throughout all this nonsense, I’ve developed... really _real_ feelings for my partner.”

Nino’s mouth twists wryly. “You think?”

She sighs, and shoves his arm. It's not gentle. Nino laughs. “Okay. Shut up. I get it.”

“You got it?” he smirks, setting himself to rights. 

“I got it,” she smirks back, and Nino needlessly shields his arm from a punch _—_ just in case. “I… think they’ve been there for a while. I think I also messed it up pretty good.” Her smirk falters. “I should have handled it differently.” 

Nino blinks, trying to piece it all together. “Differently how? Like, as in _—_ you shouldn’t have turned him down?” Adds, "As Ladybug?"

Marinette ponders. “Is that the right way to think about it? Turning him down? Maybe it is. For all his flirting and joking, he never once asked seriously for something more... but he and I both know he wasn’t entirely joking, either. I don’t regret telling him what I told him. I just regret how.” Marinette sighs. “And what’s worse is that, even after Ladybug told him what was happening… it didn’t _change_ how he felt, which is what... what I’d sort of hoped for. It just changed how he acts. How _we_ act.”

“You expected he would just... _stop_ feeling that way about you?”

“Well… not right away, maybe,” Marinette leans back against the wall, dejection written over every feature. “But eventually…? Yeah. I guess I was thinking of what I went through when you told me about Adrien and Ladybug." 

"But that... seems like a totally different situation, isn't it? Ladybug and Chat Noir are partners. Adrien and Marinette are..."

What are they?

"Yes and no. The ‘yes’ is why I regret not handling it more delicately. The ‘no’ is why i still think saying something was the right thing to do. It _sucked_ , but I’m glad you told me. You cared about me _—_ and adrien _—_ enough to tell me the truth.”

Nino’s not really sure how to argue with that.

“But I… didn’t realize how hard it would be to process the Ladybug confession while having to face each other so much. Adrien and I weren’t really ever _close_ , so I got the luxury of getting over him in… private? Whereas, now, Ladybug and Chat have never been so rocky, and all the while, Marinette gets a really unethical front row seat most nights to seeing just how out of sorts Chat Noir and Ladybug really are.”

“So wait. You told Chat you didn’t return his feelings because you thought it would change how he felt about you?”

“I told him because... I didn’t want him to get his hopes up.”

Nino tries to process that. “So… you crushed them, instead?”

Marinette somehow manages to glare and look truly, miserably chagrined all at once. “Nino, I _had_ to tell him, and I wanted it to be sooner rather than later! I sure wish _I’d_ known about Adrien’s feelings earlier. The last thing I wanted to do was drag it out even longer, and only end up hurting him in the end, anyway.”

 _How do you know what the end will look like_? Nino wants to ask, but first: “But… even when Ladybug told him that she didn’t feel the same way, to try to minimize his hurt feelings or whatever… you already… sort of did? Have feelings? Didn’t you?”

Marinette doesn’t answer right away.

“I think… I might have. I think I might have been trying to ignore them.”

“Why?” Nino presses. “Because it was too soon after letting go of Adrien?”

Marinette considers.

“It’s a dumb reason,” she warns. “Even _I_ know it’s dumb. I, of all people, know why things are the way they are.”

“Try me.”

“I think… so, I know _why_ , technically, Ladybug can’t return Chat’s feelings—at least, not yet. Like, right now? Definitely not. But... _ever_? Who knows what it might have been."

" _Might_ have been?" Is this the melodrama? Things aren't really  _that_ bad between Ladybug and Chat Noir, are they? In the back of his mind, Nino absently wonders what this means for... well. Paris.

"Well, even if I hadn’t royally screwed it up," Marinette continues, "I can’t really say what would have come out of our partnership, right? Who know how Ladybug and Chat Noir’s feelings would have developed for each other? But,” Marinette insists. “I’m not just Ladybug. I’m Marinette, too.” 

Nino grins. He gently slips his chin into his hand. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten?” 

“Oh, _hush._  I’m telling you… I think that one of the reasons why Marinette _still_ has trouble acknowledging Chat Noir and Adrien’s feelings for Ladybug, even apart from the we-don't-have- _time_ -for-this-we're- _superheroes_ drama and self-identity-preservation aside, is… it’s more that… maybe,” Marinette floats far away, “Maybe I’m just tired of people seeing Ladybug.” Presses, “Ladybug, _only_.”

Nino listens, frowning. His hand feels clammy beneath his chin.

 _Oh_...

“I told you it’s stupid," Marinette tries to brush it off. "Of course I know why people only see Ladybug. Of _course_ that’s who they see, that's the point—of _course_ , Chat Noir _can’t_ see that I’m both, that’s _dangerous_. But—maybe it hurts, a little. At the same time. You know, because, it turns out that he _can_ see both, even if he thinks they are different, and… well. We know who he always picks.”

Nino tries to grasp for an explanation. Anything to try to prove her wrong. 

“Maybe… he doesn’t think he has another choice? Maybe he’s… you know. All or nothing? That seems like him, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s like how Adrien is. Or how you were—you wouldn’t acknowledge feelings for Chat, because you didn’t want to make any space for someone else when you were already so in like with Adrien?” Hot damn. “Holy shit. This is confusing?” 

“Hm. Maybe,” she concedes, sort of, like she’s not really sure. “But, unfortunately, as Ladybug I’ve already messed with our partnership, either way… so that's the reason why I think Chat has started to see, I don’t know—Marinette _differently?_ But what good does that do?” she questions. “Isn't that messed up? For me to have ruined one half of my relationship with him, only to try to help build the _other_ half? Marinette still hurt him,” she answers. “Whether he knows it or not."

"Yeah, but Marinette—"

"No, Nino—what if it’s years before he knows it? What if he never knows it? I’ll know it. You’ll know it. So I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. Ladybug has tried to apologize, to be there, to give space and respect his wishes; Marinette just wants to be a supportive friend. What more can I do, when the most genuine thing I _could_ do is also the one thing I absolutely cannot do?"

"You mean... tell the truth?"

"I mean, tell the _whole_ truth." Her gaze is very heavy. It falls to their socks. It's such a ridiculous sight, given the gravity of the weight bearing down on his chest. "Until you and I got stuck in that elevator, all of my relationships had been swimming in half-truths for so long, I’m not even sure I know what the full truth _is_ anymore. How am I supposed to fix a broken friendship when I can't use the tools I have?"

Nino looks down at the bedspread, her knees, the inside of the cookie bag. He wordlessly takes a cookie outfit himself, and holds the bag out for her.

Marinette silently helps herself to a cookie.

 

//

 

After a few minutes of nothing but weird-normal cookie-munching noises later, it hits him.

“Dude... I think you’re focusing too much on your words,” he says. “You’re getting hung up on all the stuff you _can’t_ say. Cut yourself some slack, yeah? Maybe you don’t need the words as much as you think you do.”

 _Oh_ , he thinks, at Marinette’s heavy, heavy silence. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.

But then she shifts so that now she is sitting next to him along the wall, sitting side-by-side, socked feet hanging over the edge—hers, just next to his, just a few inches shorter—until their arms are touching, and she is half-leaning into his shoulder.

She wordlessly reaches into the bag in his hand for another one of his cookies, and eats.

Nino grins.

 

//

 

A half hour later, and Nino packs up his things on the main floor of Marinette’s bedroom in order to prepare for the walk home. Marinette is in a considerably better mood now that she’s rested, and has vented, and is down from the loft, and he’s pumped that he even got to hear a little bit about how Adrien all but accosted her in the hallway—as well as take a look at her gash, which is still pretty gnarly. He’d spent the last good chunk of minutes talking about how it seems like injuries sustained _out_ of the suit are not healed while _in_  the suit. Marinette listens to his theories with curious, keen eyes.

"I think Alya is completely right about the scrambling of the feed, by the way. She's going to try to catch Chat Noir after the next akuma attack, so any possible way you can help steer that dream to fruition would be mighty helpful. And we can still run the extra tests in my room while you're in the suit if you want, but… you may not have to worry about it at all."

"Yeah, we might as well,” Marinette yawns. “But still. That's a pretty nice relief."

"I'll say."

Another message blinks its way onto her phone. Marinette looks down at it and smiles.

Nino finds himself looking down at his backpack. There's a weird feeling in his gut. His fingertips are jittery. "You gonna head out on patrol?" 

"Yeah, just before ten." 

"The usual?"

Marinette shrugs. “Maybe… Actually, he tried to suggest we skip tonight… said that we may not need to meet up, because there was already an akuma attack earlier today."

Nino frowns:  _Y i k e   s_.

"Wow."

"Yeah... he's really not happy with me."

Nino flounders. "Maybe he's just busy?" 

Marinette shrugs again. "Maybe," she humors him. Barely.

Nino, himself, is barely humoring the idea of such an excuse coming from Chat Noir... But still. It's possible, right? He knows they are both wondering:  _What could Chat Noir be so busy with?_

"You don't...? Never mind."

"No,” Marinette catches on. “What?"

"It's just… Do you ever wonder what he does outside the suit?"

"Of course I do. I wonder all the time." 

"Do you?” Nino prompts. “I can't tell."

"That’s a good thing,” Marinette insists. “Means... I’m doing my job, doesn’t it? I see what you’re getting at, Nino, but… really, it doesn't help to try to wonder about it anymore than what I can't already help; it’s not gonna bring us any closer.”

Nino isn’t real sure there’s anything helpful to say, after that. So he does the only thing that can help. He does what he’s always done. He holds out his fist for a fist-bump. Marinette blinks in surprise.

And then, with a grin, she meets it.

 

//

 

"Jeez, kid,” says Plagg, his big eyes boring into the side of Adrien’s head. “Are you sure you’re up for this? Your pacing is digging a canyon through your floor. Your father won’t know how to redecorate a chasm.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
"Oh? Is that why your whiskers are so tangled?"  
  
"I don't have whiskers, Plagg."  
  
"Well, if you did, they'd be knotted. Did you hear me? _Knotted_."  
  
“Mm-hm."  
  
"You're not listening to me," Plagg complains. "You're too busy moping."  
  
"I'm not moping."  
  
"You're aggravating."  
  
Adrien glares. "Don't you mean aggravated?"  
  
Plagg doesn't clarify. "You must be out of sorts if you're putting up this much of a fuss. Of course, it _has_ been a few weeks since you last floated your googly-eyed way over to patrol, but _this_. This is a new record. It's been a while since I've seen a Chat chosen so reluctant to face his partner."  
  
"I'm not _reluctant_. I'm just... busy."  
  
Plagg deadpans. "Texting?"  
  
"I'm preoccupied," Adrien defends. "Marinette and I only just started talking. Like. _Today_. Literally hours ago, and we've been texting all afternoon, not including the time I already because I had to spend fighting the akuma instead. I'm just... annoyed that now I have to stop."  
  
"At ten? On a weeknight? Surely she's not going to think it so strange that you went to bed?"  
  
Adrien makes a face. "But I'm _not_ going to bed... and if I didn't have patrol, I wouldn't have to make an excuse..."  
  
"Ah. So you could continue chatting well into the hours of the evening, yes? Via a small electronic box?"  
  
"You know what cellphones are, Plagg, the suit gives me one."  
  
"I am simply making a point. You know," Plagg yawns, and twirls, and slips onto the desk shelf. " _Some_ people would _like_ a little respite from conversation sometimes."  
  
Adrien's eyes widen. "Wait. Really?"  
  
"Oh dear heavens, don't actually listen to me for human social advice. I was implying that _I_ could use a break. From conversation. About this. My whiskers are knotted."  
  
"Your whiskers are fine, Plagg."  
  
"How would you know? You don't have any."  
  
"Because I can see—you know what. Never mind." A long sigh spills out of him. "Okay, Plagg. Come on. Let's get this over with."  
  
Plagg blinks. "Ouch."  
  
"Oh, come on. You know what I mean." Plagg continues to look at him. One of his little, nearly-invisible eyebrows raises. "Ugh, Plagg. Not _now_. I just... today was a really good day, you know? All things considering. Why can't I just stay home and look back and enjoy it for once? Why can't I just say the day is over?"  
  
"You know... many a Ladybug and Chat Noir pair have had similar conversations before. When the danger is too great, it is not of ill-interest to... remind each other to stay focused on the task at hand."  
  
Adrien's glare slips into something uncomfortably defensive. "Says the one who can't go more than twelve minutes without a snack break."  
  
"Ladybug is usually the responsible one," says Plagg, in a strangely serious voice. "It is a responsibility she often has to bear; be careful about how you choose to punish her for the way she decides to shoulder it."  
  
" _Punish_ her?"  
  
Plagg yawns again. It effectively breaks some of the tension, but also makes it a lot harder for Adrien's glare to be taken seriously. "Consider what could have happened if neither of you acknowledged this responsibility, no?"  
  
"She didn't have to... I don't know. Say it the way she did."  
  
"How would you have liked her to say it?"  
  
Adrien isn't sure.  
  
"What's this all about?" Adrien dodges the question—for now. "Why get all _sage_  and drop pearls of wisdom all of a sudden?"  
  
"Hm. I thought you were gonna have a heart attack when your little girlfriend confessed.”  
  
Adrien's head spins.  
  
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Adrien protests. "I told you before."  
  
"Still saving your heart for Ladybug?"  
  
"Yes. I mean, no—I mean, Marinette and I just barely became _friends_. Finally. Don't make it try to seem more complicated than it already is."  
  
Plagg looks at him. He looks and looks and looks, and just when Adrien's skin starts to feel to tight, as soon as he's about to burst out an excuse, Plagg yawns a third and final time.  
  
"All right, kid. Let's get the show on the road, yeah?"  
  
Adrien sighs. _A show?_  
  
"Yeah," he shifts his feet, slowly planting them wide. "Go ahead. Transform me, I guess."

  
  
//

 

This is silly; they faced an akuma less than twelve hours ago—the chances of Hawkmoth victimizing another person tonight is extremely unlikely. He knows this, Ladybug knows this, they both know this. Tonight's patrol isn't about an akuma, or Hawkmoth, or even Paris.

It's about them.

Chat's not sure how to feel about it.

One month, two months ago, he would have fawned over the notion of Ladybug going out of her way to spend time with him. But now he can't help but feel like she's more worried about appeasing him, of trying to fix whatever is broken, of just trying to go through the motions until something starts to feel normal again, and the thing is—Adrien knows it doesn't really work that way. Time well-spent is a tricky thing to master, and right now, neither of them are spending their time how they truly wish to. The other problem is, Chat might actually be starting to resent it.

"Thanks for coming," she says, like she can read his thoughts. (And that's always gotten him, too—she seems to read parts about himself that he hasn't ever been able to read in her.) "I have this feeling that one of the next akumas will be... different. Do you get that feeling? I can't help but think that we've, like, reached a plateau. And we're about to climb to a new level."

Chat shrugs. "Maybe. It could happen.”

 _Ah,_ he thinks; without meaning to, Chat has brought the stale-water conversation to a dead-end. _Dammit_.

Chat flounders for something to fill the void. It's not easy.

And just as he starts to think, _wait_ , _why should I have to be the one to find something else to say? I'm not the one who insisted on patrol,_ he looks at Ladybug's profile in the nighttime sky. His chest aches.

Plagg’s words come floating back to him. Chat heaves a sigh.

“Hey,” he says, knowing that they don’t have much time, because he is going to cut this evening short, and that he should say _this_ , at least, either way. “Good job, today.”

Ladybug lists her head at him. “Thanks… are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies. _Just okay_. “Are you okay?”

Ladybug doesn’t answer. Which is fine, because Adrien was starting to get a bit of weird déjà vu.

“I really messed up,” Ladybug says quietly, and he can feel her gaze trace the edges of his mask, his jaw, his hair. “Didn’t I?” 

Chat Noir grins a small, slow grin.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how I can fix it,” Ladybug admits, quite openly. She’s clearly been thinking about this weirdness between them over the last few weeks, too; he’s not sure if this makes him feel better or worse. “I’m… not sure I’ve found any really good solutions yet.”

Chat tilts his head at her. “Are you asking me for suggestions?”

He guesses so, if the look on her face is anything to go by. Ladybug looks up at him, and it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_.

“I miss my partner,” she whispers.

Chat swallows. His eyes keep flitting away, and back, but her gaze stays true. He works up his nerve. “Your partner?”

“My teammate,” she adds. “You know… My friend.”

Something catches in the back of his throat.

It’s warm, and a little like anger.

(Ladybug is still one of the most important people in the world to him. It just hurts to be around her so much. Is that normal? To feel so sad? To care about someone so much, and know that they care about you, but to feel so out of reach?)

He may not know a whole lot about friendship, he realizes this, but he still thinks of a stupid tell-tale hat and scheming in the library and danishes and half-eaten sandwiches, and with a flip of his stomach, he realizes, _wait_.

Maybe he does.

“I’m pretty sure friends are supposed to trust each other,” he says, open and honest and without apology. Just facts, right? They’re finally, actually talking to each other. Like, truly talking. It’s time.

The brows of Ladybug’s mask furrow. “I do trust you,” she insists, like she’s offended, which is hilarious, because he’s not sure he believes her. “I trust you with my life.”

Chat Noir stares into her. “Really?” he asks, and it’s gentle and unapologetic all at once. “Which life?”

He watches her eyes fill with understanding. Great.

Now they’re both angry.

“How long are you going to hold this against me?” she asks. “How many times have we _agreed_ to keep our identities secrete? Even your own kwami must have told you how needlessly dangerous it could be.” She halts, expression flitting, and then she considers him with piercing eyes. Chat needs to look away. Whatever she’s looking for, she catches him doing it. “What’s this really about?”

Chat chews it over.

He has to ask.

“The Nino kid,” he begins, slowly. “From the elevator… does he really know who you are?”

Ladybug looks at him. She's thinking carefully about how to answer, which is answer enough.

Chat looks away.

"It wasn't a choice, Chat," Ladybug whispers. "I would rather not have shown anyone."

His whole chest aches.

"It's not something I wanted,” she whispers, so soft. "He's... already as endangered as it is. And now, no matter how well he deals with it, he's still a liability."

"He wouldn't share your secret," Adrien says, without thought, with conviction. He freezes, wondering if he's shown too much feeling; he waits to see if her suspicion grows.

But Ladybug is offended on Nino's behalf. "He would never consciously choose to, no," she says, "but I never wanted this choice either. Sometimes, things happen. He may not have any control over what choice he ends up with. I don't want him to have to face that, either way, at all."

Chat's chest tightens. He remembers the conversation in the hallway from the other day at school, about _contacts_ and  _just in case_ and other things that have been eating away at him, from the inside out. "So, he's in danger. He's a liability. So you keep in touch with him?”

Ladybug nods. "I do."

He ventures, "Without the mask?"

Ladybug looks at him.

Chat turns away. The Paris skyline is beautiful, objectively, but the air feels cold. He wants to be anywhere but this tiny scrap of rooftop.

Something occurs to him: “Is Nino the one who helped you test the sound recognition?” 

He can feel her watching his profile, trying to get inside his head. _Not tonight_. 

Hesitantly, she answers, “Yes…”

Chat straightens his shoulders. "All right," he says. “Have him test me, too.” 

Ladybug snaps to attention. “ _What?_ ”

He twists his head to face her, to catch the brunt of her shock and disapproval full-force. “What?” he echoes, flat and defensive. “He knows you well enough to receive _you_ for some tests—why not me? I’ve met him before, both while he was the Bubbler and during that time with Jackady when we ran into each other in the studio. And even if I didn’t, _you_ trust him, don’t you, so why shouldn’t I? It’s something we need to get done, isn’t it?”

“It is… but _Chat_ , think of what it could do to his safety! He’s already on the radar enough as it is. Do we really wanna drag someone innocent any deeper into this?”

“Like we already were, you mean?” he challenges. “He’s not the only one who’s researching, you know. The Alya-journalist-girl is trying too, didn’t you know.” Chat considers this. “Or, you _do_ know, and that’s why you’ve actually been avoiding her? I get it if you don’t wanna hang around _me_ post-purification, but you practically run from her.” 

Ladybug falters. “That’s different.”

“Is it? _We_ made a choice—so can he.”

“We have protection. _We_ have powers, and we have the Miraculous to hide us—or at least, we _think_ we do, which is, might I remind you, exactly why we’re at such a risk! We have at least a chance of these powers working in our favor; Nino doesn’t have those protections.”

“He has us, doesn’t he?”

“In what way, Chat?” Ladybug scathes, and he’s not really sure what she means by that, what she’s implying, until, “I know _I’m_ looking out for him… Right now, can you really say the same?” 

Chat’s whole jaw tightens.

They glare, and they glare, and they _glare_ , and there's a tiny ball of hot shame turning his stomach, and he hates hates hates that he feels this way right now, _in front of her_ , because of her words, but he doesn't want to argue anymore, he just wants to go, he doesn't want to listen to Ladybug remind him that he's acting selfish and being irresponsible and talking about potentially putting someone who is supposed to be his best friend in danger— _but is it? is it really?_ he isn't so sure—he knows that there's good that can come of him working with Nino, too, if she would _just_ listen—but instead he's jabbing and ribbing and irritated with her just—she never _listens_ to his ideas—and he just keeps pressing and pressing and pressing in so that he can feel like he's got the _hang_ of this super messed-up predicament, he's so angry and ashamed and upset and persuaded and stubborn and  _annoyed_ that taking her face in his hands and pulling her close to him is the absolutely last thing on his mind right now, it is, because anything other than that would be nothing short of _stupid_ , and _she already turned you down once, you stupid cat, are you really gonna make her say it again?_  and then her gaze drops to his mouth. 

He flees.

"Right,” he stands, without warning. The anger is still there, straining his voice tight, but it’s a simmer now, burning with something else, and his face and chest and neck all feel too warm, so he uses the heat to keep glaring, _concentrates_ on it until the burn feels cold. He turns his back. “I’m heading out now."

Ladybug’s eyes widen in realization. "Chat—" Ladybug holds up a hand, like she might try to reach out for him, but he won’t turn around. “Chat, wait. This isn’t… this isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about—”

 _No, Ladybug._  

“Hey,” he says, gently, coming to a standstill. He briefly glances down at her, over his shoulder. “I’m tired… okay?”

Ladybug watches him. 

“Another night,” he says, a little less than half a promise, and he wonders if he’ll actually keep it; what will happen if he does. “Not tonight.” 

Slowly, Ladybug lowers her hand. A lump forms in Chat Noir’s throat. He faces forward. 

"Goodnight, Ladybug."

 

//

 

 _Screw it,_ thinks Adrien.

 

//

 

“Whoah,” says Nino, stumbling a hurried step back, making space for the dark figure crawling in through his open window. Nino watches Chat Noir set one black heel to the floor of his darkened bedroom, then the other. “This is… an honor?”

Chat Noir gives him the strangest smile; it might just be the moonlight, but it doesn’t feel particularly… go-lucky.

Feeling decidedly off-kilter, Nino chances a glance at the clock: ten twenty-seven. Wow. Ladybug and Chat really called it quits early tonight, didn’t they?

“Is there… something wrong?” 

Instead of answering, Chat holds out a hand. It’s a little uncomfortable because Chat still has this grin on his face, which feels a bit like he’s sizing Nino up. He’s not sure what he’s done to warrant such attention—or _scrutiny_ , more like—from one of Paris’ powerful superheroes. Well. _One_ of them, sure. 

But not this one. 

“Chat Noir,” he announces, still holding out his hand. Finally, Nino takes it. It’s a single, firm handshake... and then Chat Noir releases Nino’s hand, so Nino lets it fall to his side as Chat Noir drops to his trade-mark, signature, superhero bow. “At your service," he grins up at him.

Nino has the weirdest feeling that he's on the butt-end of some private joke. So. For Nino, Master of all Humor... it does not sit well.

He tries to brush it off. 

“Nino…” he answers slowly, realizing that he hasn’t actually turned on the lights in his bedroom yet. He’s in the dark, in his messy bedroom, and Chat Noir just climbed in through his window. What the fuck? “I, uh. I know who you are.”

Chat Noir’s weird-ass smirk actually gets less predatory, just the tiniest bit. Or maybe it just loses some of the edge? Maybe Chat Noir loosens up a little? Nino doesn’t know. Until four minutes, ago, Nino didn't even think Chat Noir _needed_ to lighten up. Lightening up seemed like the last thing Chat Noir and his nine lives would ever have to do, and it's amidst this maelstrom of jumbled-up thoughts that he has the split-second worth of reason to think, _holy shit, I should text Marinette_.

“Ladybug told me you helped her test our identity-protection,” he says, point-blank, as Nino’s mind reels. “With your recording equipment.”

Holy shit. “She did?” 

Chat nods, once. “She did.” 

The silence is so awkward, and at least ten seconds long. “Er… okay. Did you… did you have any questions?”

“Actually,” Chat’s head tilts to the side, all lofty-cat, and it’s really striking Nino now, just how different Chat is acting from the last time he saw him—was it that day in the television studio? Was it on the news? Nino can’t really remember, and his heart is actually starting to thud pretty damn loudly now, because _holy shit_ , he and Marinette haven’t planned this, does she know about this, why didn’t she _text_ him, did she not have time, what is he supposed to _do?_  

Chat is watching him.

Nino keeps a blank face. He tries to calm down.

“Actually,” he repeats, and his bright green cat-eyes are so fucking keen in the dark, it’s unnerving. “I’m here because I hear that _you_ still have some questions.” 

Is he getting defensive? Nino can feel himself getting defensive. Why is he getting defensive?

“Yeah?” Nino hears himself say, finds himself instinctively crossing his arms. _Damn, Marinette_ , Nino thinks. _What the hell_ happened _on patrol?_

“Yeah,” Chat echoes, like it’s an inside-joke, and, of course, Nino doesn’t fucking get it. “You tested Ladybug’s protective powers, and since her powers are different than mine, it makes sense that my protective powers might be different, too, right? Well, I’m here,” he shrugs, and it’s all tongue-in-cheek, but the air tastes a bit sharp. “Feel free to test.” 

“Right _now?_ ”

“If you’re up for it,” shrugs Chat. And Nino must be imagining things, but this sounds like a bit of a challenge, and for some stupid, stupid, _stupid_ reason—Nino can feel his hackles raising, can feel himself being goaded into rising up to take it.

Nino sets his shoulders. He sets the thin line of his mouth. Gestures to the equipment against the wall on the far side of the room, the oversized headphones, the control panel, the beginnings of a very strange and awkward night.

“Fine,” he sighs, heavily put-upon. “But for the record, like—I’ll never understand how y’all superheroes manage to completely disregard people’s sleep schedules,” Nino comments, and though he is clearly irked, he is _trying_ for some levity. “But yeah. Fine. Why the hell not. Come on in, Mr. Ultimate Destroyer Cat, join the damn recording club.”

Chat Noir is still sporting a half-grin, but he looks only mildly amused; Nino plays back those last few sentences, and grimaces, a bit. 

Hm. If he was aiming for levity, or a truce, then… perhaps implying that Ladybug makes late-night house calls was... not the best choice of words.

Nino sighs. He rubs a hand down the back of his neck. It feels weird to be seen by anyone, even Chat Noir, without his hat.

“Sorry,” he concedes. “I was just expecting to be able to go to bed early tonight.”

“I could find someone else, if that’s more suitable for you.” Nino isn’t really sure he means it, or _what_ he means _by_ it, but Nino’s not really planning on letting Chat Noir leave without a sample, at any rate. “I just figured since, you know, you already have the one suit figured out, you’d like to take a stab at the other.”

For a long while, Nino and Chat Noir only stare at each other.

“All right, then,” is what Nino chooses, very carefully, to say. He figures his best option is to pretend that nothing is weird about this, that he and Chat Noir are still cordial strangers instead of what we _this_ weird half-resentful-friend-of-a-friend-slash-partner-in-crime-fighting-no-I'm-not-jealous- _you're_ -jealous business is. “Hope you’re feeling jazzed up for a monotonous evening of tedious recording clips from a preselected, designated list of test-script lines. A real, bona fide acting gig.”

Chat’s grin is _just_ a bit too sharp—without showing any teeth at all. 

For another moment, neither of them move.

Then, with a long-suffering sigh, Nino heads toward the equipment. “Let’s get this show on the road, then, yeah?”

Chat’s step falters, but it’s probably only because of the dark. Or something.

 _Oh, ohhh, oh, Marinette_ , thinks Nino, with no small amount of heavy, billowing, delirious dread. He picks up the oversized headphones and wonders how in the _fuck_ he is going to fit them over Chat Noir’s _cat_ ears. 

 _You are not going to be happy… with either of us_. 

_Are you?_

 

//


	6. buddy track record

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _5/24/17_. AGAIN A CHAPTER UPDATE AROUND THE SAME TIME/DAY OF THE MONTH, this is a whole new level of consistency for me, hot damn.
> 
> SUPER THANKS: **BETA'd** by the lovely **ABIGAIL**.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)

 

//

 

Chat Noir leaves Nino’s apartment at quarter to midnight.

He arrives upon Marinette’s rooftop at just half-past.

 

//

 

“Are you ever going to visit during normal daylight hours again?” she teases, rubbing at her eyes as she lifts the door just high enough for him to fit through. “Whatever happened to—whoah. What’s wrong?”

Chat slips through the opening and into the bedroom without a sound, pawed soles touching flawlessly to floorboards. Stunned, Marinette scurries to close the trapdoor behind him, stumbling down the final rung; it leaves them in darkness, for Marinette has neglected to turn on her lamp.

The words aren’t ready to come out yet, so he’s left with no choice but to pace the length of floor near the ladder. He can feel his tail swishing behind him.

“You’re quiet,” she accuses, barely a whisper, as she watches him. “Did you get into a fight?” 

Chat’s stomach plummets, snapping his thoughts to a halt. “What?”

Marinette blinks in the dark, taken aback, and Chat reminds himself to _calm down_ , to focus.

“With Ladybug,” she clarifies, watching him as best she can in the dark. “I mean… did you get into a fight with Ladybug?”

He knows she can see the way the tension rolls out, ever-so-slightly, of his shoulders. _She wouldn’t know_ , Chat reminds himself, _about Nino._  

_Yet._

So Chat Noir swallows down the truth, finds the space between his teeth: not the whole truth, but not even half the truth either, finds the perfect actor’s almost-lie; huffs, “Is it that obvious?” 

Marinette frowns at him whole-heartedly. She heaves a sigh like she’s already tired of following the script, and it grates at something inside Chat’s bones. They’re still by the ladder, but even through his pacing, Chat Noir can’t bring himself to make them move deeper into the room.

“Do you want a snack?”

“I have a question,” Chat Noir answers instead, trying to steer her back in the direction he needs to be. He takes in the sight of her, truly, for the first time of the evening: she has clearly just come down from her bed in the loft, and she is already tired, and she is usually worried about him.

He is not as contrite about this as he thinks he probably should be.

“What?”

“Why did you never ask me for a sound sample?” he asks, so point-blank it’s almost a demand—wait, no. It _is_ a demand, and Marinette’s eyes widen in the dark. “I come over to your room like every night.” 

She fidgets. “It’s not like… _every_ night.”

“Marinette.”

There’s a sigh, long and deep and sleepy, but when she answers her voice is steady and clear. “I don’t know! How about, ‘maybe I didn’t want to have to worry about superhero stuff when you were here?’ Or! ‘Maybe _you_ never asked either!’ Or: ‘Maybe I just wanted things to be… just Chat and Marinette.’ You know? To just be a normal teenager—or try to, anyway. And… you know. For us to be friends.”

“But your friends _always_ talk about superhero stuff,” Chat Noir insists, with an even more agitated swish of the tail, because he’s having a hard time connecting the dots. “I _know_ they do. Your Alya-friend is always chasing after us—Ladybug and I—for interviews or sound bytes and photos. And the hat-kid _knows_ Ladybug.”

“His name is Nino.”

“You know what I mean.”

Marinette lists her head. Can she catch the strange tilt to his tone?

 _Cool it, Agreste_.

“It’s just—“ his claws grasp at air (because Marinette is always there for every theory in the park, every check-in, every discussion, _everything_ ). He knows this. _Adrien_ knows this. “I know you spend a lot of time with people who are researching what happened that day in the elevator, right?” he persists. “And there’s even been some progress, I’ve _heard_ about it, Ladybug even told me, but I haven’t heard about any of it from _you_ ,” he says.

Marinette listens.

So he continues.

“ _You_ , who I see, like—all the time,” shit, he’s getting flustered, “and I’m just wondering, like— _why_ didn’t you ask me to help? I could’ve helped. I would’ve totally helped, if you’d asked.” Chat Noir hears those words play back in his mind—suddenly doesn’t know how he feels about them, and tries to cover them up, like blotting at an ink stain in his favorite shirt. “I mean, _I’m_ not concerned about my powers protecting me so much, but your friends are worried, and Ladybug is worried, and—aren’t you curious?" he demands, venturing closer, and he knows she can feel his cat-sharp gaze digging into her. He likes the way it feels, like he’s making his point, like she _hears_ him. "Why didn’t you ask me to work with your friends? Did you think I wouldn’t want to? That I’d, like—say no?” More horrifying, “Did you not _want_ me to?”

“Well… of course I care about it,” she insists, just toeing the line of scolding, but not quite. “But I’m being honest about why I didn’t ask before.”

Chat’s ears twitch. “Before?”

The look she glares up at him is just short of a metaphysical flick to the nose; in an alarming twist of three seconds, Chat remembers how refreshing Marinette’s exasperated expression can be.

“Well… to be honest, I was thinking pretty recently of asking you.”

Chat Noir blinks. “Really? You were?” Suddenly shuffles on awkward feet as some of the cold angry-heat rushes out of him, leaves a feeling that’s uncomfortably warm instead. “Well, like… how recently?”

“Like… only as of _tonight,_ ‘recently’, honestly. I decided tonight that I would ask you the next time you came over.”

Appeased, but still too agitated to accept a boon so easily, Chat Noir presses: "Not _sooner_ than that? I’ve been visiting for weeks—“

“Yeah, I _know_ ,” Marinette cuts him off, and if her glare was like a chiding flick to the face, then this expression is like a sharp pat to the cheek—he can almost feel the sting from it, warm and sharp beneath his mask. “But maybe that’s not all I wanted to spend my time with you talking about. I liked the idea of you getting a break from the superhero-talk, too, you know.”

“I get breaks,” Chat argues, even though it sounds silly. “Already, I mean. I mean—I’m not _always_ a superhero. I’m have my civilian-days too, you know. Even some nights. If I’m lucky. Which, I’m usually not. But. I’m not always wearing this suit, you know. I can turn off the superhero-talk when I want to.” 

Marinette looks up at him like he’s said something immensely amusing, but she smiles at him like she’s trying to be polite about it. He’s not amused by her amusement, so he doesn’t know why he feels so warm all over.

“I’ve been thinking about that too, actually,” she mentions. “What with the protective powers and the safeguarding the identities and all. I think I’ve finally come to realize that even if… you may not look the part, you’re always going to be a bit of a superhero. Just like,” she steps closer, “you’re still a bit of a regular human, even when you’re wearing the mask. Maybe it was nice to pretend that we were both just regular humans, for a bit?”

She looks up at him, waiting, but Chat is very much at a loss of what to say. 

“Oh." 

“Yeah.”

Oh.

Chat Noir isn’t sure what’s just happened.

The feeling is only further reinforced by the way Marinette sighs. “Well,” she says. “It was nice while it lasted, right?” And Chat wants to rewind the last thirty seconds and go— “Back to the sound samples: I’ve… actually been planning to ask Nino about it, too. That is, if I could borrow his equipment,” she taps her lips with a finger. “Like, Nino already has enough to worry about being Ladybug’s civilian contact, doesn’t he? So I decided I would ask you instead.” Runs her fingers through her loose hair; her bedhead is only mildly distracting. “You know,” she adds, when his silence grows too awkward and unhelpful, “since I’m… sorta like _your_ civilian contact.”

Chat Noir’s stomach sinks. _Shit._ That makes so much more sense. Shit.

He should tell her what he did—no. No, he should tell _Ladybug_ what he did first.

Fuck.

“I… hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Suddenly, Marinette’s mouth breaks out into a grin. “Silly kitty,” she gently shoves at his arm. But when Chat Noir only stares, brain short-circuiting, Marinette’s expression shifts back into one of tiredness. “Yeah, well—if it makes you feel any better, I only just recently started to think of myself as your civilian contact, too.”

Chat Noir startles into action. “You were my friend first,” he blurts, less than elegant as always, and she blinks at him in wide-eyed surprise, but he doesn’t care how spastic it seems: it’s important. Chat Noir won’t consider taking it back.

Her voice is all warm, and her face is all soft. “I’m pretty sure I was an ‘assigned’ person to protect,” her eyes glint. “I distinctly remember a cat showing up on my doorstep… to flex.”

“I, as a matter of fact, happen to be an ex- _purrt_ on flexing.” This is, strictly speaking, not at all a lie.

“Ugh! And how many days has it been since I last heard a pun!”

Chat Noir gapes, astounded first by her words—and second, by how much lighter the air feels. Is the room larger? Is he breathing easier? “Er… not _that_ long?”

Marinette’s expression softens. “Actually,” she challenges, quiet and gentle, “It’s been… quite a while.”

Chat blinks. “Really?”

She nods. “Yeah,” she answers softly. “You really haven’t been acting like yourself, Kitty.”

“How have I been acting?”

“Darker,” she answers, immediately. “Worried. In your head.” And then, almost tentatively, “You haven’t called me ‘Princess’ in a while.”

Chat is shocked.

“Really?”

For a long moment, Marinette only looks at him. She nods. Her fingers find his left wrist, and she pulls him deeper into the room. “Come on,” she says, dragging him along. “I brought up some snacks earlier, just in case.”

As they stumble in the dark toward Marinette’s desk, Chat Noir takes a moment to marvel at how just much of his days— _nights_ —is spent following Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

It’s been working out pretty well so far.

They sit on the floor, and they snack, and Chat grins in the dark, and they choose not to turn on the light.

 

//

 

An hour of small-talk later (of snacks and nothingness and _this is so easy_ and, _“today, during the akuma attack—you were safe, weren’t you?”_ ), Chat Noir bows low at the base of Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s ladder, and leaves.

“ _Goodnight, Princess_ ,” he whispers, looking back for just a touch too long, but it’s worth it, because it means Marinette places her hands on his back to usher him up, and she looks happy as she laughs at him, at herself, “ _Go._ ”

 

//

 

Adrien does not sleep easily, considering.

But he has had worse nights than this, and Plagg is thoughtfully quiet for now, so Adrien lets the day wash out in the space of breaths before he falls asleep, and thinks—maybe things will be okay.

He will tell Ladybug the truth, and she will maybe _listen_ to him for once, and they will fix whatever it is between them, maybe, no no they _have_ to, and he will spend more time with Nino, and they will get to the bottom of this identity powers thing, and tomorrow—tomorrow he will see Marinette.

 _Just explain what happened to Ladybug_ , he thinks again and again, _tell it to her first,_ and eventually falls asleep.

 

//

 

“Nino!” says Mrs. Marinette’s Mom, standing inside the doorway she's just unlocked for him. She’s all pleasant and warm—if not, understandably, surprised. “You’re so… early." 

He looks over to the pastry case and finds it completely empty. All of the lights inside the main bakery are still turned off. It sounds like Mr. Marinette’s Dad is shuffling around in the back, doing whatever bakers do at six in the morning, Nino doesn't _know_ , he can only imagine, he barely remembers the last time he was able to watch the sunrise let alone physically walk outside to _greet_ it.

“Good morning, Mrs. Marinette’s Mom,” Nino replies, just one shade too cheerful. He reins it all in, because the last thing he needs is for Marinette’s parents to realize that he’s, y'know— _freaking out_ , a little. “I texted Marinette last night and asked if we could get a headstart on our history project this morning in the library. She just texted me and said she’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”

Marinette’s mother’s eyes widen. “She’s... awake?” 

He’d normally try for a joke, but for now all he can do is nod.

“Well… wow. That’s nothing short of a miracle.” Then she smiles at him, like _he’s_ a good influence, which is something Nino is still getting used to, because before that day in the elevator, Nino has never been accused of being a positive influence, not ever, not even indirectly, he’s nervous, okay, he’s _nervous_. “Go ahead and help yourself to some fruit upstairs,” she offers, “I’m sure Marinette’ll be down any minute.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Mom.”

Nino ambles up the familiar staircase. The kitchen is empty, but Marinette’s parents have left out a bowl of fruit and some crepes, sitting warmed between two ceramic plates. Nino helps himself to one, plus a handful of strawberries, then plops down onto one of the barstools and shoots a text upstairs.

He knows she’s received it when something crashes to the floor—hope that wasn't her _phone_ she dropped—and a hiss of something— _since when does she say such_ _bad words?_ —quickly follows. Nino is chewing his first strawberry when a figure bursts down from the trapdoor, still pulling on the second sleeve of her blazer.

“You’re eating another breakfast?”

Nino talks with his mouth full. “I have the rare and wonderful opportunity to eats your parents’ crepes.” Holds up his handful of fruit, by way of explanation. “And this is delicious.”

Marinette rolls her eyes to the ceiling as she comes to stand opposite him at the counter, but she’s grinning a little bit, too. Sensing that the coast is clear, Tikki chooses this moment to fly out from Marinette’s purse… and heads straight to the fruit bowl.

“Good morning!” she chirps, then loses herself in a mountain of strawberries. Nino tilts his head to the side, searching for her; she really blends right in, doesn’t she?

“Mornin’,” he grins, then looks up to catch Marinette’s eye. She smiles at him, but she looks so tired; he wonders if he looks the same.

When was the last time either of them got a good night’s sleep?

(Alya’s face comes to mind, as it often does; her features are her eyes are well-rested and fierce and bright and her face is healthy and determined, without the tell-tale signs of running ragged—no matter _how_ tightly she jam-packs her schedule.

But…

 _Maybe_ _Marinette has a point_ , he thinks. _Maybe it’s not such a horrible idea_ , you know, to have the chance to just be an ordinary, uninvolved non-super teenager? It’s not like he thinks that being a non-super Battle Buddy is _harder_ than being a secret superhero, but Nino’s not so sure it’s any easier, either. He still doesn’t _like_ the idea of keeping Ladybug from Alya, or vice versa, but. But.

 _Maybe it’s not such a crazy idea to limit the Miraculous’ reach_ — _?_ )

“So what’s the fuss about?” Marinette asks, conversationally, as she spreads jam over her crepe. It’s a messy affair, so she spends just as much time spreading the jam as she does cleaning the sticky drips off the counter. “Why chat so early?”

 _More like ‘why Chat so_ late _’_ , but Nino cannot, _will_ not, drop the news in this manner. No.

“I have a question,” is how he starts off the morning instead. “Do you think… Chat Noir—you and Chat, both, I guess—are in any danger of being akumatized?”

Marinette’s hands still over her crepe. She stares at him. Nino stares back.

Eventually, she sets down her breakfast onto the plate.

“Actually… I’ve wondered,” she admits, “if we were susceptible... but it was about a year ago.”

Nino swallows down the strawberry. “A _year_ ago?”

“Just about. I started to wonder if I could be akumatized while out of the suit. It’s kinda funny, that now it's a year later, and yet I’m _still_ doing so much thinking on what else can happen to us inside versus out—voice recordings, injuries, akumatizations… The questions just keep coming.”

Nino glances to where Tikki is munching her way through the fruit bowl. “ _Can_ the Chosen get akumatized?”

Without letting go of the strawberry she’s tugging to her middle, Tikki deigns to answer in her deceptively little voice. “To be honest… we have never before encountered a situation quite like this. After so many centuries, it is only inevitable that _some_ Chosen will not have been as well-suited to the role as others, but never have we faced such an ill-suitable match as the current holder of the butterfly kwami.” Tikki frowns down at her strawberry, as Nino’s mind replays the word _centuries_ over and over. “The Miraculous stones are not _meant_ to face one another. They are… an ancient family. Just as we are. It hurts to see the stone—and its kwami— _abused_ this way.”

Marinette taps an affectionate finger onto the top of Tikki’s little head, who shudders and takes a comforting bite of sweetness from her strawberry. Nino frowns in the resulting silence.

“Tikki and I came to the conclusion that, so long as we fight to keep our personal identities hidden—even from other Miraculous holders—then, at least right now, Miraculous stones will probably repel one another’s influence."

"What do you mean by influence?"

"Maybe, like... each others' auras? Our awareness of each others' whereabouts or energies or anything like that? Just like we've never sensed the presence of another Miraculous _stone_ , even when Tikki has later confessed that she thinks she's felt the faint aura of another kwami.”

“Whoah,” Nino turns to Tikki, who quietly munches. “Really? When! Where!”

“Mm-mm!” Tikki shakes. “Marinette already knows not to ask!”

Marinette nods her head, slowly and reluctantly and good-naturedly. “She only tells me about it loooooong after the fact. Like… days after.”

“Tikki!” Nino exclaims. “You _know_ who Chat Noir is!?”

“ _Not_ true!” Tikki shakes her head, more forcefully. “I can only _feel_ the essence of his kwami’s energy when it's nearby—not pinpoint it!"

"Think of it as... a sort of reassurance between two really ancient beings, like they're telling each other that they're still out there, still going, still wishing each other... the best."

Nino’s glasses turn solid white with the glare upon his absolute deadpan expression.

"Were you about to say 'wishing each other luck'?"

"Oh, hush,” she snaps, glaring back. “If there's any time to say it, it's now, isn't it?"

"Okay, fine, so— _what_ , like? The kwamis give each other telepathic high fives across time and space? But only sometimes?"

"Think of it as… an invisible nod of recognition and appreciation," Tikki says, as she hugs her strawberry.

Nino notices. "Like a long-distance hug?"

"I like to save those for only special occasions," Tikki grins. "When they will pester the Bad Luck kwami most."

Nino and Marinette both stare down at her. Tikki munches.

"Anyway, my ability to sense Chat Noir's  Bad Luck kwami as well as I can is only because Bad Luck and Good Luck have always worked closely together… even when we are at our peak strength, I am not able to sense the other Miraculous stones and kwamis the same way—at least not under the current circumstances. When I try... it is difficult, especially if the Chosen does not yet want to be found.”

“What… does that mean?”

“Until the Chosen actively wishes and consents to being found—in their hearts, and thus in ours—we keep our Chosen ones separate and protected."

Nino blinks. Marinette is quietly eating her crepe.

”Wait,” Nino speaks through a sweet-stained mouth. “How many are there?"

"Mm-mm! Marinette knows better than to ask that too!”

Nino sends a long-suffering look towards Marinette, who just shrugs and grins a little helplessly—whether it’s because she’s already learned the hard way that Tikki will not spill ancient secrets before their due, or because _she’s just chewing_ —he doesn’t know.

"Oh, come _on_. This is cool stuff!”

"I already have enough with worrying about Hawkmoth, thank you,” Marinette reasserts herself back into the conversation. “Not to mention _you_ and Chat and myself.” _On that note— “_ Tikki will show me what I need to know, when I need to know it."

Tikki's eyes twinkle.

"Er," Nino glances from one to the other. "You will?"

“I shall. Or… perhaps someone else will,” Tikki says vaguely, enough to make Nino think that she’s sort of enjoying herself, at least a little bit. Nino has a suspicion that she _likes_ being mysterious. Must be an Ancient Being thing. "But don’t worry—you will find out about the other stones, and their potential Chosens, in time… including the one that has fallen into Hawkmoth's grasp.”

“Yeesh.”

“Until then,” Tikki continues, ignoring his outbursts, “this lack of awareness and subsequent repelling power is why we think the akumas will pass over Marinette and the Bad Luck’s Chosen, for now… As long as Chat Noir and Ladybug are committed to protecting their identities, not even _I—_ nor the Destroyer’s kwami—can sense a Chosen’s presence!”

Something occurs to Nino. He glances between them. “Marinette doesn’t know the name of Chat’s kwami?”

Marinette casually pokes at her crepe. “I’ve never asked,” she answers thoughtfully, preparing to take a bite, then pauses, clarifies: “It just feels like… it’s better not to know? It’s… private, you know? Our kwamis are our everything.” Takes a bite. “If I ever learn the name of Chat’s kwami, I’d hope it’d be because he introduced me to her, himself.” Reconsiders. “Introduce me to… _him?_ ”

Tikki munches deliberately. Marinette, noticing this, shrugs and continues eating.

Nino has, miraculously, lost his second appetite.

“So… so you think there’s a chance you might one day—learn who Chat Noir really is?” Nino presses, and—this conversation had been really cool and all, and informative, but _shit_ , it’s reminding him all about what he _really_ came all his way just to say—so he tries to wiggle the conversation back around to it.

Marinette glances up from her chewing to pin him with a curious look. Nino tries not to falter.

“Well, yeah…” Marinette shrugs. “After, you know, everything… Of course I’d like to try.”

But—

“Aren’t you worried that people will have realized _you_ haven’t been akuma’d yet?” Nino wonders. “Like… _you_ , Marinette.”

“Hmmm… I’m a pretty positive person, in general.” She’s quiet for a long moment. “Maybe… if something really bad were to happen, sure, people might start to wonder why I haven’t… but. In general? I don’t know. There are plenty of other people in the city of Paris. I think it will be a long time before Hawkmoth works his way through the _entire_ population, enough that they’d be able to pick me out of the crowd via process of elimination."

“Point taken,” he answers, rushing to wrap up and move onto the next point. “So… the thing you just mentioned: about the akuma powers not being able to discover the essence and the auras of you as a Miraculous Holder and all. There’s a pretty good chance that this applies to Chat Noir too, right?”

Marinette finishes up her crepe. “We think it’s a pretty safe bet… well. As safe as safe can be, anyway. Right, Tikki?”

“Right!”

She shrugs. “So, yeah. Why?”

“ _Wait_ ,” Nino halts, and _is he stalling_ , no, _why would he be stalling_ , “What exactly made you decide that you needed to look into akumatization for yourself?”

“Oh. It wasn’t for me. It was for Chat.”

Whoah, what. “Really?”

“Yeah… it really freaked me out, whenever Chat Noir was put directly in danger by an akuma. Like the time that he actually vanished, completely, from Time-Breaker’s attack.”

"What, like he died?" Nino huffs.

Marinette purses her lips.

He pales.

“Wait. Wait, wait," Nino's stomach sinks. "Are you telling me… that Chat Noir… technically… _died_?”

Marinette picks up a strawberry with intense concentration. She stares at the little seeds. “Technically,” she whispers.

“ _Technically?_ TECHNICA—Marinette,” Nino forces himself to breathe, holy cow. “Does he _know?_ ”

“It hasn’t come up,” she replies, immediately, and Nino recognizes well enough by now to know that it’s not anger that’s painting her tone defensive—it’s remembered anguish. “When it first happened, I really couldn’t handle the reality of it. I didn’t want to _talk_ about it, even with Tikki, and by the time I was ready to, it just… it had been so much time. And everything worked out by itself and, I just… I didn’t want him to feel…”

“Feel _what_?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, helplessly. “Worried. Grateful. Guilty.” A heavy sigh escapes her and—she collapses onto her arms, head to wrists, wrists to marble countertop. Nino startles, and Marinette muffles, “I’m such an idiot.”

“Whoah, wait! Hold on—it’s not _that_ bad, is it? The not telling him part, I mean—you can just tell him now! Right? I mean, like you said, it all worked out, right? So just tell him. As Ladybug! Oh. Wait. Is this not the best time? Because you’re fighting? Is this why it’s been so hard to tell him? There’s always new shit hitting the fan?”

“No. I mean, _yes_ ,” Marinette sighs, finally lifts her head. “You’re right. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m an idiot because… the reason Chat Noir was attacked by the Time-Breaker is because he took the hit that was meant for me. _I_ was supposed to be the one who vanished.”

Nino tries not to let the implications of that settle too deeply. He’s actually feeling a tiny bit nauseous.

“But… I thought… I thought he did it because he knew that we needed my powers to defeat the akuma. That if I’d been taken down, the akuma couldn’t be purified. Hawkmoth would have manipulated Time-Breaker again and again, without me to stop them, and he would have won.”

Nino is confused. “But… isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” she sighs. “But that’s not why Chat Noir did it.”

Nino looks at her face. Oh.

_Oh._

She leans over her crossed arms, digs her elbows onto the countertop. “There were so many signs this past year… I misread each and every one.”

Nino watches Marinette’s face.

His chest hurts.

“How so?”

She huffs, and her tone is coated with the stuff that helps make Marinette so goddamn _scary_.

(No one would ever _want_ to get on Marinette’s bad side, and that’s even before the damn suit; and Nino thinks to himself: _Cosmos take pity on any poor sap who reaps the lukewarm shoulder of Miss Marinette Dupain-Cheng_.)

“Well, at first, because he _always_ flirted, and it never felt genuine! Those first dozen akumas… it was all ‘my lady’ this and ‘bug-a-boo’ that, and it was all clearly just big talk from someone who’d recently had his tongue loosened up by a pair of ears and a mask—”

“Yikes.”

“But then after we fought together a number of times, I started believe more that he was _trying_ to mean what he was saying—but also that he was so willing to take whatever I would give him, that he was all the more willing to give me _everything_ , and. I just. He was my partner,” Marinette says, suddenly changing tone, and it’s thoughtful and hard and soft and cold and confused all at once. “You know? He was my partner by circumstance, or fate, or both, and when it came to battle, or watching my back, or trying his hardest and pushing me to do my best, I trusted him with _that_ … of course I did. But… that didn’t mean I was willing to trust him with anything else.”

A new resoluteness has entered her eyes. She pulls both hands to wrap around the warm plate where her crepe once rested, like she’s drawing warmth or something magical from its existence, but all Nino can see is that his friend is hurting, and maybe a little heartbroken without realizing it, and _the only reason you trusted me was because I happened to be caught in the same elevator by chance—or fate, or both—_ and _are you starting to see now, that it’s okay to trust? Just a little bit?_

And also, that Marinette is really pensively holding onto her empty, crepe-free plate. His heart squeezes.

So Nino lowers his chin onto interlaced fingers and grins like he wants to.

“Trust him with _what_?” he prompts, he teases. “Like your heart?”

A strawberry collides with his nose; he rescues it immediately, into his mouth.

“Hush. This is so _dumb_. I don’t know, you can probably guess the rest from there.”

“Try me.”

“Ugh. Fine, I just—I guess then a few months passed by, and we’d already grown so accustomed to our habits, I just… it took me a while, to realize that his antics didn’t bother me as much anymore. Not that they _bothered_ me, per se—okay, well, maybe, they did, a little, okay, _a lot!_ Because they made it so hard for me to feel like he wasn’t just playing games with me—! And by then we’d already become closer and our team grew stronger and, and I just… I didn’t really realize it while it was happening, but I went from ignoring the signs out of disinterest to missing the signs out of habit, on _purpose_ , to… not acknowledging how different things were becoming. Because I was too scared to see what would happen if _I_ started believing that Chat Noir wasn't just playing around anymore. Like… if I started to feel that back."

Nino watches from atop his interlocked hands, mouth parted, astounded.

Suddenly, Tikki pats her on the elbow; like flipping a switch, Marinette sighs, takes strength from it, then stands tall.

“It wasn’t just that incident with Time-Breaker, though, although that was certainly the scariest, when I look back on it. There was another time in which Chat was actually lured into a sort of negativity spell… I didn’t fear for his _life_ as much, maybe, but I feared for other things too, especially because he’d actually been influenced by an akuma while _in_ the suit. So Tikki and I came to the conclusion that it looks like we’re at risk of being influenced by the akumas even more so while _in_ the suit than out of it, even if we can’t necessarily be akumatized… I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

Nino puts his face in his hands. “Damn,” his voice muffles. “Just when I thought were starting to figure something out.” Nino hears a clinking sound of glass, and then looks at the countertop: Marinette procured two glasses from the drying rack and has poured them each a cup of orange juice. On a whim, Nino takes his glass and clinks it with hers. “Cheers.”

“You’re so lame,” she ribs, but she laughs. That’s what matters.

“So what happened to Chat while in the suit?” Nino asks, but it’s more conversational than anything else. He realizes that a full twenty minutes has gone by, and he has not yet mentioned what he came over here to mention in the first place. He really sorta doesn’t want to.

“Oh. Right, I think you were attacked that time, too? Well, it was Valentine’s Day, when Chloe broke Kim’s heart and turned him into the Dark Cupid, who happened to hit Chat Noir with an arrow… which was also taken _for_ me, argh, goddammit, I _need_ to talk to him! Anyway, the conversation with Tikki about possibly being akumatized happened after that incident—we talked a lot about he’d been _influenced_ by an akuma, but he hadn’t been _possessed_ by an akuma, himself—and he didn’t need to be _purified_ , all it took for me to break the spell was for me to kiss him.”

 

//

 

“I’m sorry. My brain seems to have leaked out from my ear. There’s only this weird ringing noise, which is where I think my brain used to be. I clearly did not hear you properly.”

 

//

 

“Nope. Still ringing. It’s just rushing noises, like the ocean. It's a seashell. My ear is a seashell."

 

//

 

“Marinette.”

 

//

 

“Marinette. You what."

 

//

 

Adrien sets foot onto the school grounds.

He glances around for a familiar pair of faces—he's early today, but not _that_ early; by this hour, they should already be hanging right around the school steps—but the yard is empty of his friends. Adrien swings the door closed behind him.

"After school ends, text me every half hour on the dot to check in," Nathalie reminds him, as he has been granted permission to stay out late after school to work on a project, although his dad is acting especially paranoid as of late. He's already the most protected kid in all of Paris—does he really need to make Nathalie keep tabs on him the entire afternoon?

"All right," he says, without looking back. He can hear a beat of hesitation in the second of silence between them before the car window rolls up behind him, and then Adrien is once more surrounded by the indistinct soundtrack of teenaged chatter.

_Where are they?_

Adrien pulls out his phone as the Gorilla pulls the car away: he stands in the curb and checks his messages. Empty. 

(He knows he is overdoing it; he’s worrying right now, but why? About what?) ( _You weren't supposed to go to Nino's last night,_ he stares at his home screen. _You heard what Ladybug said. She had a point._ )

( _She doesn't hear your ideas,_ he remembers. _She knows it's a risk, but it's a risk Nino is willing to take.  He's smart. He's not going to do something without recognizing the consequences._

 _Like you did_.)

Adrien bites the inside if his cheek.

( _You’ll explain_.)

( _Marinette's suggestion made sense. You'll fix it._ )

On a whim, he makes a group message text: it's the first one they've used since that first afternoon they all went to Marinette's to study, when the topic of protective identities first arose. He hopes they won't read too much into the new group communication... but what would they read? He doesn't know. He just can't shake the feeling that they will.

 _Hey_ , he messages. _Nathalie and the Gorilla dropped me off early today. Are you guys already inside?_

Then, because waiting at the curb feels a little silly, he walks over to wait at the steps. It's a pretty bold move, considering he's alone and an easy target for just about anyone—cameramen or teachers, but especially Chloe.

Three minutes, four minutes, five. Seven minutes pass.

No response.

Adrien tries to look like he's busy on his phone, but he keeps just staring at the homepage by mistake. Did Nino oversleep?

( _I… didn't stay too late_ , he reminds himself. _I left well before midnight._

  _Doesn't mean you slept any better._ )

"Stop," he mutters, and pretends it was directed to his phone. He fiddles with an app he doesn't care about, and then he wonders: Did _Marinette_ oversleep?

Adrien pauses.

This is his first day of school with Marinette as an actual friend. He'd be lying if he said he didn't spend all morning, and a good portion of the night, wondering how different it's going to be.

Just as Adrien starts to think he should just head inside—twenty minutes gone by, and no sign; so much for _early_ —he catches sight of the two of them… walking over from the bakery?

 _That's not the main entrance_ , Adrien realizes. _That's the annex._ The way that leads straight to Marinette's family's home. _Was Nino there?_

He holds his phone in his hand, and whatever pointless character he'd been playing on the new game he just downloaded surely dies. He's too busy wondering how long Nino has been walking Marinette to school.

Adrien looks down at his phone. Very consciously relaxes his grip, eases his fingers away from the case. _Idiot_ , he thinks, unbidden. _It's just across the street. What are you thinking. It's Nino._ But as they come closer, Adrien sees more: they're talking fast and low, heads bent close together. Nino looks serious. What could Nino be feeling so serious about? _Maybe it's the history essay_ , he thinks, without believing it.

His gaze slides to Marinette's profile, and he watches her listen to Nino with exceptional focus. She's listening so intently that she stumbles when she reaches the curb of the school courtyard, and would have fallen if not for Nino's steadying hand. And then Adrien watches as Nino prevents Marinette's near-trip without ever looking away from her face. It's almost like Nino had known what was going to happen; it was so easy for him to reach out at that exact moment, to put his hand on her shoulder like it's so normal. 

( _It's Nino_ , his mind repeats.)

Adrien tightens the grip on his bag strap, letting the tension build in his knuckles instead of along the line of his jaw. He conjures the most recent reason he has to relax.

 _This is a good thing_ , he thinks. _This was good, that we talked. Today will be different. Today we'll start as friends._

And then a new thought pops into his head: by getting closer to Marinette, would that mean he could fix things with Nino, too? Would they _all_ become closer? (But when did he start to feel like things with Nino with broken? They're not, are they? Not really?)

 _Yesterday's conversation was for the best_ , he decides, just as Nino looks up and realizes that Adrien is waiting by the steps. _Definitely for the best._

Except.

Except now he doesn’t know how to react when Marinette lights up at the sight of Adrien. (And she _does_ , oh—how she does.) He's grinning stupid—the sloppy smile, as his father says, _it's not what the camera wants, it's not what you've practiced,_ but it’s on his face anyway—when she and Nino reach him, Marinette rushing two steps ahead of her partner-in-crime, the both of them smiling, and Adrien's heart is so happy when they greet each other good morning, it's fit to burst.

Alya joins only a minute or so later, and Adrien suddenly doesn't mind so much that he'd waited so long while alone— _he'd been alone for much, much longer, hadn't he?_ —because they enter the classroom as four, and today when he sits down in his seat and feels Marinette grinning at the back of his head, he doesn't hesitate to turn around and return it.

He and Nino fist bump twice that day: once, in the morning just after they've taken their seats, and then again in the early afternoon, when they part ways for fencing and general P.E.

Adrien and Marinette find each other in the library again—Nino and Alya are both mysteriously absent—and Adrien's head spins so much it's silly, because now classmates are coming up to ask the Class President questions, to ask Marinette for advice, to say hello to their childhood friend, and each time, Marinette will first turn to Adrien, look him in the eye and say, " _excuse me for a sec_ ," or " _hold on a minute_ ," and everything about her voice and movements tell him that she's asking him to _wait_ , to _stay_ , _don't go anywhere_.

Adrien can't help smiling.

 

//

 

It’s hard as shit, but Marinette and Nino try and try and _try_ to sneak quick, private chat-breaks all throughout the school day. 

At the moment, they’re hiding beneath one of the less-frequented stairwells like they’re straight out of a teen-drama, and Tikki is munching on a bag of chocolate-covered potato chips he snagged from a vending machine. Tikki is _always_ happy to see him, which is a point of pride Nino never knew he wanted so badly, but Marinette is currently less than pleased. She would’t be so impatient if Nino could actually open his mouth and explain what’s going _on_ , especially now that they’re finally finally alone, but Nino doesn’t… know how to tell Marinette what happened the night before.

“Okay, we have five minutes,” he greets, already stalling, “and if I take any longer, I am _really_ going to be late for P.E.” 

“Nino,” she sighs, glancing at the time on her phone. “You’re already late for P.E.”

“Okay, then I’m going to miss _all_ of P.E.” He says it like a joke, but it’s also completely true; Marinette is not impressed. 

“Wasn’t it officially a part of the Buddy contract to not miss any classes or drop any grades?”

“You never actually let me write any contract!”

“Because it’s evidence!” she hisses low, then—as if merely _whispering_ the word evidence is enough to summon eavesdroppers from the grain—she glances around the very empty stairwell. He’s about to joke that Hawkmoth probably has better things to do than listen to two teenagers talking in hushed voices beneath a staircase, but shit—isn’t the kind of thing the old weirdo _does_ look for? “I’m just making a _point_!” she hisses again, even quieter, and Nino is about to argue, but: “Stop dawdling and tell me what’s bothering you! You’ve been acting weird all morning. Just come out and say it. I won’t be mad.”

Nino gapes.

“Seriously. What is it?”

Supremely uncomfortable, Nino shuffles his feet. His fingers find the brim of his hat, and then Marinette is very suddenly ducking below the brim, getting in his face, pressing on, eyes growing soft.

“What is it?” she practically whispers, eyes wide, tense all over. “Did you find something in the recordings? Is someone at risk of being akumatized?”

“I—what? No. No one’s being akumatized—that we know of, anyway. Not yet. I just—the thing is—something sort of weird happened last night and—I don’t think it’s a big deal! At least. I don’t think it _should_ be a big deal. Maybe it’s not a big deal—maybe you already know about it—but if you _think_ it’s a big deal then you’re gonna be mad—“ 

“Nino!” Marinette reaches up and lifts up the brim of his hat with two fingers, as if she thinks it might open him up—it’s not a _rock_ , okay, he isn’t trying to _hide_ under it; except, _maybe?_ maybe he really sorta is—and when the fluorescent lights of the school hallway illuminate his face, Nino sees just how tired he is reflected back at him in Marinette’s expression.

“This is so _lame!_ ” comes a voice from three floors up, startling Marinette and Nino to pieces. By the time Nino registers that the voices are too far away to have belonged to anyone that could have seen them—but are coming closer—Nino and Marinette already have their backs pressed against the wall, wide-eyed and spastic, until Marinette tugs on his wrist to send him off towards the exit. Nino vague recognizes the complainer as Kim.

“ _Go to gym!”_ Marinette mouthes, once he looks back at her. Her gaze means _business_. _“We’ll talk later.”_

He believes her.

Nino sighs, and heads off, following orders, and feels her worried gaze rest on his shoulders like it’s a physical thing. It sucks.

It sucks harder, because he knows he put it here.

 

//

 

It's just before last period, when Nino accosts him outside the locker room.

His hair is still slightly damp from rinsing away the sweat in one of the locker room sinks, and one particularly stubborn bang just won’t get out of his eyes. He's actually just in the middle of thinking about how his dad would have a fit if he saw him like this—how he might actually not dry his hair on purpose before going to his last class, _just because_ —when Nino appears from around the corner. Nino throws up a thumbs-up sign at him, and glances once at Adrien’s disheveled hair.

His mouth tilts up into a smirk. ”New look?" 

Adrien is immediately annoyed, but he also recognizes that it’s the usual kind; less defensive, more open to good-natured teasing. Easier to grin through. So he does. 

”Tough practice," Adrien corrects. Then, all-too-knowingly, "How was gym?" 

“Ha. The part I actually attended? Actually... not half-bad. I've been running a lot recently, so P.E. isn't as brutal as it used to be.”

Adrien is surprised. "You?” he asks, readjusting his pack over his shoulder as they start to stroll down the hallway. “Running? Really?”

“Yeah, man.”

“When?" Adrien wonders aloud, then wonders _is this rude?_ His complete and utter shock? Nino doesn’t seem to mind, but—then again—when does Nino ever seem to mind?

"Mmm. Maybe almost everyday now? Most days, I guess, depending on how things go.”

"Really? Where?"

"Around the city. All sorts of places." Nino grins. "Sort of depends on where the akumas are wreaking havoc.”

Understanding dawns, and Adrien laughs. "I guess I should have known. If the akumas keep attacking, all of Paris will become regular joggers through pure self-preservation habit." Nino’s grin remains, but he says nothing. Adrien is about to ask him what he’s thinking about, when Nino beats him to the punch.

"Hey,” says Nino, with both hands in his pockets. “What happened with Marinette yesterday?”

His stomach drops.  

 

Cautiously, ”What do you mean?” 

“I mean she’s been super happy all morning, so it seems like y’all finally found some more things in common?” Immediately, he holds out a hand for a fist bump. “That’s awesome!”

"Oh," says Adrien, still shocked. He stares down at the fist, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with it. ”Yeah," he nods, and then can't rein in the grin, realizes mid-sentence that he doesn't want to temper his excitement, especially not with Nino. Bumps the fist with feeling. ”I went over to her house yesterday before the akuma attacked."

“Oh yeah, she told me you helped her get to the nurse after she gashed open her elbow."

Adrien winces. "That... was my fault, actually."

"Nah, man, Marinette is always bumping into something. She says this summer we might as well all go do some bumper cars, yeah? Put her clumsiness to good use. I, for one, can think of nothing more frightening than Alya and Marinette allying themselves up in destructive Attack-Wagons, but I am already overruled, so.” 

Nino’s vivid imagination regarding summertime plans and predictions keeps Adrien laughing all the way down the hall, has him thinking about his first real summertime with lots of friends and things to do that aren’t listed out on a spreadsheet. He catches himself thinking things like _how close is the nearest beach?_ and _what do teenagers do for fun during the summertime?_ and thinking about summer fashion and seasonal treats for Plagg and what his classmates look like in spring dresses. _Does Marinette design summer clothes?_

He tries to imagine the four them at the park, or the arcade, or walking along the Seine with ice cream and other things he’s seen in movies, and for some reason the girls are wearing sun hats— _Marinette seems like the type to wear one, doesn’t she? Has she before? Maybe he should ask his dad to look into a new line?_ —but with the whole summer vibes-fantasy thing he’s got going it really works, and for some reason they’re all, like, walking arm in arm, which is super impractical, but Adrien can’t help but liking the thought of it anyway. Nino is cracking up over his own joke as they reach the homeroom, and Adrien isn’t really even sure what Nino’s been talking about the whole time, but he’s glad just the same.

After they take their seats, Adrien’s thoughts rewind all the way back to that morning, and the English class-turned-study hall becomes nothing more than a place for him to sit and spend the entirety of his last class thinking about the entirety of his day so far. _Did today really happen?_ It feels like a good day. The kind of good day that he hasn’t in a long, long time—but even better. _What was the best part?_ Can he even choose?

(How about when she caught sight of him that morning in the courtyard? Their forty uninterrupted minutes together in the library? Maybe when she greeted him warmly in the halls and invited him in on the jokes in class and shared her cookies with him at lunchtime in the park—by breaking each of her cookies in half, one-by-one, instead of just giving him a full one all his own, which is more a sign of friendship than anything else he could ever ask of her.) 

He wants to hold onto this certainty and contentment for the whole week—the whole month. Through the summer.

So, of course, it lasts less than an hour.

Next to him, Nino makes notes in the margins of his notebook. Adrien wonders what's got him so interested.

He forces himself to stare down at the notebook in front of him, spinning his pen over his hand as if he's in deep, deep thought. He remembers the day he first learned this pen-trick—he’d dedicated a whole Friday evening to sitting at his desk and practicing how to smoothly balance the spinning pen in his grasp, instead of getting enough rest before a big shoot like he _should_ have—all because he’d seen a teenaged boy do it in a movie on TV, and so Adrien had wanted to do it, too. The actor had been deep in thought, or pretending to be, and it'd looked so cool that he just had to learn it too.

And now, here is Adrien, sitting silently in agonizing wait as they all finish out the remaining ten minutes of impromptu study hall. He is deep in thought, and frowning, and spinning his pen, and it's not very cool at all.

He sees the weary smudges beneath Nino's eyes, exaggerated by the shadows of his hat. The way Alya keeps sending him worried glances, keeps his phone lighting up with silent texts. The way Marinette will still smile at Adrien whenever he turns around to look—but after the third time in the stretch of their last class, she suddenly shifts her gaze to Nino, meaningfully, like she’s trying to ask _Adrien_ what’s going on inside his head, like he’s supposed to know— _isn’t he?_ —like she’s trusting _his_ judgment, his insight, and then she offers him one last strain of a smile and turns back to her notes, and Adrien, feeling unnerved, tries do the same. 

Adrien sits in silence, and spins his pen, and in the meantime—

He starts to feel like a liar.

 

//

 

Class is officially dismissed, and then Alya whisks Nino away before either of them are the wiser.

Marinette walks down the single step so that she’s standing next to Adrien’s seat, her eyes still trained on the doorway, through which Alya and Nino have just vanished. “That was fast…” she mutters.

Adrien, miraculously, has lost his voice on the matter.

She’s standing next to him, not really saying anything, and Adrien knows that he _should_ say something. He should agree with her— _yeah, that’s weird_ —but that feels inadequate. He should maybe offer up a question, like, _wonder why they didn’t say goodbye?_ but that could lead to trouble. He should probably even say something like, _we’ll catch up with them later, I guess_ , which would be safest, but doesn’t feel any less like he’s hiding a really shameful secret.

He needs to talk to Ladybug. 

“What _now_?”

He blinks himself back toward her direction, but realizes a second too late that Marinette isn’t speaking to him; he knows this because Marinette is glaring at Chloe—he has no idea what else Chloe has said, but it’s never too hard to guess the lines—so while she’s preoccupied with his childhood friend, he gets a pretty good luck at how tired Marinette looks, too. _Are the looming finals really getting to her? Is she overburdened with Class President responsibilities?_ Then, just a thought, out of nowhere, _Did something happen between her and—_

Would Nino have told Marinette? 

About Chat Noir?

(What reason would he have?) (Why hadn’t Nino mentioned it to _Adrien_ , now that he thinks about it? He hasn’t mentioned anything, not a single thing.) (Is that what they were talking about this morning on the way to school?) (Before school?) ( _What does Marinette think?_ )

The pit in his stomach grows bigger with each breath; Adrien tries to keep it under control. 

 _But_ , Adrien tries to reason, _she’d be supportive_. Marinette isn’t necessarily front-lining the investigating the same way Alya is, sure, but she’s still invested in the theory, right? She knows how important this hypothesis is to Alya, and even to Nino and— _holy cow_ , _has Nino even told Alya that he’s already recorded Ladybug?_

Gradually, Adrien feels himself slouching in his chair; it doesn’t do any good to stop the sinking of his stomach.

“Aren’t you, _Adrien_ -honey?”

His face snaps up, toward where Chloe has positioned herself in front of his desk, palm splayed wide over the top. Both Chloe and Marinette are staring at him expectantly, with Sabrina waiting behind in the wings. Kim and Max are somewhere in the back, he knows, because he can hear Kim’s snickering. 

“Ah… sorry, Chloe,” he starts, and watches and Chloe’s face already starts to fill with the same sort of heat she always gets whenever something doesn’t go her way, the same look he’s recognized since they were six and her father was still making half-hearted attempts at occasionally saying ‘no’ to her whims. “I was thinking about the notes I took for the final exam. What did you say?”

She’s already turning her back, chin tilted up, and Marinette, for some reason, has an expression that he’s never seen before; it reminds him of Chat.

“We’ll talk _later_ ,” Chloe calls over her shoulder, whatever that means, and then sweeps out of the room with Sabrina in tow, both of their noses in the air. For a long, strange moment, it’s silent.

“Well,” Marinette eventually sighs, waking him back up. “Now that the show is over… ready to go?”

“What was that about?”

“Just… Chloe. Trying to stake her claim, as usual.”

“Claim?”

“Yeah,” she grins, and Adrien still feels wildly out of the loop. “You should ask her about it next time.”

“Do I want to?”

“No.”

“Right…” Adrien answers, uneasy. Marinette does something she’s never, ever done to him before—she rolls her eyes.

“Come on,” she says, and starts for the door. Adrien quickly follows. “My parents picked up some more of that cheese you’re always bringing around, and I think you’re gonna like what they’re trying with it.”

He can almost _feel_ Plagg quivering inside his shirt pocket—oh. Oh, nope. That _is_  Plagg, actually quivering. Marinette’s gaze drops curiously to where his shirt pocket has practically started rattling—the panic in him is certain that it looks as if his heart is trying to jump right out of his chest—so he flattens a palm to it as naturally as possible—which is, to say, _not_ possible—and laughs a nervous, awkward laugh. His other hand comes up to cradle the base of his skill—nervous tic, it’s one of his default poses in a photoshoot—and he prepares an explanation, anything—but by the time he’s got half a word on his tongue, Marinette has already turned away, pink-cheeked and flushed.

“Come on,” she repeats. “We should get going.”

Stunned, Adrien hastily grabs his bag, and follows.

 

//

 

Today’s visit to Marinette’s room is different.

On the one hand: Adrien has far more certainty about where he stands (where he sits), and that in and of itself is a huge relief. He walks across the crosswalk in tandem with Marinette, enters through the main bakery entrance with another smiled greeting for Marinette’s parents, makes himself at home on her hardwood floor with a spread of books surrounding his study area in a matter of minutes.

On the other hand, he’s a wreck.

Marinette’s words and voice all tell him that things are fine and well and good, but she suddenly seems to be looking anywhere else but directly at him. Adrien was starting to wonder if maybe he had something stuck to his face, but a quick mirror check on the sly—Nino gave him flac for it once, but whatever, carrying a pocket mirror is habit and it’s _helpful_ —assures him that this isn’t the case.

“So I was thinking maybe we’d make some basic flashcards for the most important events, and start from there,” Marinette ponders, shuffling a blank set of index cards between her hands. She keeps changing location—across from on the floor, in her computer chair, on the edge of the chaise—and Adrien is starting to feel restless just watching her. “We can quiz each other straight off or we can turn it into a sort of timeline game, or maybe even both. I also think it’d be a good idea to start making predictions about what kinds of questions we might encounter on the test prompts, so we can start to collect the most major points of evidence that we can use during the written exam. What?”

Adrien, as he belatedly realizes, is staring at her. He’d be more embarrassed if it weren’t also hugely reassuring to find her looking him directly in the eye again. “Do you do this before every exam?”

Marinette shuffles the cards with surprisingly dextrous fingers. Does Marinette play cards? “Most of them. It’s how I remember best.” At last, she settles into her computer chair the way she tends to do: backwards, arms crossed over the backrest, hands dangling down.

“I’ve…” Never _really_ studied with another person before? Only studied _around_ them? In the same room as them? “It was different when I was home-schooled.”

Marinette shifts and straightens. “Oh. Really?”

Fighting the stiffness the creeps into his spine every time he thinks back on those days, Adrien tries to paint a decent picture without showing the gritty details: “The assignments and learning examinations were really… tailored. All the material was really… my pace.” 

“Really? What was it like?” 

_I sat in the dining room with Nathalie. We started at precisely eight in the morning, immediately following breakfast, and I listened to lectures for two hours based on the assigned readings—which I completed alone. Unless you counted Nathalie, which I didn’t, usually, but maybe I really should have because she was reading all of my studying material right along with me when she already had five hundred thousand other things to do for my dad—_

_Then photoshoots, sessions with the acting coach, fittings for the upcoming lines, and lunch, maybe the rare meeting or two, and then back to studies around two or three in the afternoon, for hours, where he engaged in more independent readings, essay writings, presentations with Nathalie, in the dining room or the private library, until she had to do her real work for my dad, and I was left to take notes by myself until dinner and prepare to do it all over again the next—_

“I guess I’ve never really given much thought to what your schooling was like before you joined us." 

Adrien looks up, only to find that Marinette has joined him on the floor. How long has she been sitting across from him?

“I was always curious about all kinds of stuff about you,” she admits, in that thoughtfully open way of hers. “Yet I never ever really thought about what it must have been like, day-to-day.”

His lips quirk up. “Sitting through Mendeleiev’s lecture is a lot more interesting.”

Marinette sucks in a breath. “Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a minute; Adrien, mostly because he’s not sure what to say.

“I spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about what you were up to,” she mentions, so _offhand_ , it kind of makes Adrien’s head spin, “but I… really didn’t know you that well. At all. Did I? That first day… You weren’t exaggerating,” she muses quietly, with burgeoning realization, "when you said that you didn’t have many friends. Were you?” 

Adrien freezes. How is he supposed to answer that without sounding lame? He doesn't want her to feel _bad_ for him; besides something happening that results in her suddenly deciding that she outright hates him, Adrien isn't sure there's anything worse that could happen to a friendship so new.

“Is it weird to want to apologize again?” she asks, elbow over knee, chin in hand, fingers curling towards her cheek. Adrien gazes a fraction too long at the way her pinky curves, and then startles.

“For what?”

She smiles at him the way Nino does sometimes; like he’s just said something ridiculous. His self-consciousness rises.

“So, aside from Chloe… Nino was your first high school friend?” she asks. “And now your best friend?”

“Yeah…”

Marinette’s head tilts in her hand, emphasizing the curve to her lips. “That’s pretty good luck,” she grins, wide and sweet, “as far as first best friends go… wouldn’t you think?”

Adrien ignores the twitch in his chest. Quirks his lips and quips, “Good luck?”

“Oh. You know. Just—I mean that. It’s nice, that we’re lucky enough that Nino’s in our class.”

He’s done it again; said something to interrupt the playfulness that is still trying to work its way out between them. _Why do I keep doing this?_  

“Wait,” he says, suddenly struck. “You’re not still feeling guilty about… the last year and… what happened, are you?” 

“You mean, how I felt about you?”

Adrien blushes. Immediately, and with _strength_.

Meanwhile, unawares, Marinette fidgets with the staple holding together one of the packets in the spread before her. “No, not about that. Just how I acted around you, I guess. I was too nervous, all the time. It would have been a lot easier if I’d told you before, maybe.”

Adrien’s stomach tumbles. (Chat Noir would have to disagree.)

And yet. 

“So… if you don’t mind me asking,” he ventures. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“ _Ha—!_ ”

Adrien shrinks back, surprised by the force of her voice, but it doesn’t take long for her to explain. Heedless of his surprise, Marinette gathers up a wry grin. “ _Oh_ , I definitely tried—just ask Alya and Nino.” 

“Wait. Alya knew?” (Wait!) “ _Nino_  knew?”

“Alya knows because she knows ever—most everything. Nino knew because Alya knew.”

( _Because Alya knew_ , Adrien’s mind recycles, over and over, blindly. _Nino knew because Alya knew, so maybe Alya knows now about Chat because Nino knows, because Nino told her, right? Nino told Alya about Chat Noir—just like he’ll tell Marinette, if he hasn’t already, they'll all know, they'll know it._ )

"He didn't tell you because he knew I wanted to tell you on my own terms," Marinette explains, oddly cautious. Adrien is alarmed by her implications. 

"Oh—I'm not mad at him," he assures her. "Of course he wouldn't tell me... that's very Nino." His jaw tightens. "He's... really good at keeping people's confidence."

Marinette only smiles, slow like a secret of its own.

But then she grimaces. "As long as we're on the topic of confession attempts and such... I... may have had a habit of leaving a gift or two for you with... inadequate signatures." 

"What?" Adrien echoes. "Like what?" 

"Like... a valentine," she reveals, "Maybe." She is clearly working through some residual embarrassment, but is determined to conquer it; Adrien is floored. “I actually wrote you a poem for Valentine’s Day,” she chuckles suddenly, slipping Adrien out from the rising panic and back into her bedroom, as warning bells start to ring in the back of Adrien’s mind, but he can’t hear them for what they are, because he’s soaking up every syllable of her voice. “In the end it was kind of a wash, though, because I forgot to sign it.” 

“Wait. Sorry—sign what?”

“The Valentine I wrote for you.”

"You... really?" Dear god, what is he supposed to do with his _hands_. “But… you didn’t sign it?”

“Yeah, no. I got distracted and totally sent it without any signature.”

There is an unsettling feeling in his stomach. Slowly, he asks, "What did it look like?"

“What? Oh. Oh, well—I’m sure you got loads of mail, so it probably got thrown out, I bet.” 

Adrien remembers the small mountain of samples that Plagg was digging through on his desk. Of the many other bags they didn’t bother to send up to his room, hidden down in the lower levels of the mansion. Evades, “Not as many as you might think.”

“Ah. Oh. Well—you know. Big, red heart. Sappy poem. Blue ink. Talk of how blond your hair is and how green your eyes are and how much I admired you. It rhymed. I meant it, of course, but now it's easier to look back on that kind of thing with a clearer eye, no?" 

“I’d thought... I think I remember that one." It's a lie. He absolutely remembers it.

Marinette pales. "You do not,” she whispers, and Adrien starts to feel his face flush, his skin pulsing with the force of Marinette's mortified stare. “No _way_. No. Do you, really?"

 _I thought.._. "I didn't know who sent it," he admits, and, because he can't help himself, "I'd made up this fantasy that Ladybug wrote it." 

"Ah," she says, very delicately. 

Adrien's stomach drops. "Oh my god, I'm sorry, I don't know why I admitted that! That was—that was a really stupid thing to say." 

She giggles at him. "You're allowed to dream, Adrien."

Yes, but... he doesn’t have to rub it in Marinette's face, does he? It's not like she doesn’t know how he feels about Ladybug, but she doesn't need him transplanting Marinette's paper-heart into his own wishful thinking of Ladybug's real one. 

( _Past heart_ , he reminds himself, because he feels it's important. _Past paper-heart_.) 

“It’s a little embarrassing now,” she admits, “but I don’t regret sending it. I really felt those things, at the time.”

Adrien is having a little trouble breathing.

“Ah… it signed off with, ‘ _my heart belongs to you’_?”

“Oh, shit,” Marinette flushes, and then flushes _harder_ , “I mean—wow! Sorry! I didn't mean to let that—yeah. Wow. Yeah… that was mine." 

Adrien feels the floor fall out from under him.

“Sorry,” Marinette mistakes his confused silence for something that it’s not. His gaze snaps to hers. “Maybe you preferred the anonymity?” 

That’s not even what was most important to him. Why did _that_ part come out? Why not what he really wants to ask, why not _but you don’t feel that way now?_

Adrien marvels at himself. 

“Wait,” he straightens up, speaking aloud as the thoughts filter into his brain. “Did you say—a gift or _two_?” 

“Oh. That.” 

“Was there… more?” Adrien tries. “More attempts, I mean.” At least, that’s what he thinks he means.

“Oh. There’s a few more,” she says, very mysterious, and for a moment he worries that she’s laughing at him, but he’s starting to recognize it now: the sound and feeling of when Marinette laughs at herself. It makes the room feel lighter, and easier and brighter, and also like his vocal chords are in knots. 

“Oh, ah. Really?” he checks. “Er, uh... You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Nah, I don’t mind so much,” she waves it off, and Adrien sits rigid and cross-legged on the floor, waiting. “I’m just… not sure about… _if_ I should tell you.”

A few too long moments pass in which Adrien can very much see that she really _isn’t_ sure about whether or not to share the rest. The absolutely last thing Adrien wants to do is give her a reason to doubt their newfound trust; to feel pressured into sharing something about herself that she is not yet ready to share. 

He is about to tell her not to worry about it, to say, _hey why don’t we just worry about the test for now, haha, yeah? Where are those index cards? Let’s go grab a croissant_ —

“I still have your umbrella, you know,” she admits, suddenly. “I was afraid to give it back. Well. Maybe not ‘afraid’ to… I just didn’t want to, really.”

Adrien glances up, broken from his reverie. “What? Why?” 

She shrugs. “I liked knowing that it might be a reason for you to talk to me.”

Adrien ponders the full weight of that for a moment. “Really?”

“Hmm. It sounds sort of silly, doesn't it?”

“I... actually still have something of yours, too.”

Marinette's eyes widen. There's a shock in there that seems misplaced to Adrien; surely it's not _that_ much of a surprise, right?

"You do?" she asks. 

"Yeah," he shrugs. "I kept it for the same reason,” and then, in a rush, before he can think twice, “You gave me your lucky charm."

"My what?"

Adrien feels silly now. _Lucky Charm?_ Jeez. What if she’d just made up the whole ‘lucky’ thing, in the moment, that day of the their tournament rehearsal, to appease him? He’d been sucking pretty badly that afternoon when they’d practiced together… He’d _known_ he wasn’t going to do as well as her in the tournament, so her having made up the whole thing to take pity on his ineptitude and their inevitable soul-crushing defeat wouldn't _bother_ him, per se—that seems like the sort of ‘kindness’ and ‘helpfulness’ thing Marinette would do; it's one of the reasons he likes her—but he's not sure he wants her knowing just how much her little charm has actually influenced him.

"Your… bracelet,” he says. “The one you lent me… for the tournament?"

"Oh," she says faintly. Then, "You still have it?"

"Yeah," he admits, glad to finally be able to share that he’d been thinking along the same lines as she’d been with his long-forgotten umbrella. 

( _Well. Maybe not_ long- _forgotten.  
__Maybe not forgotten at all._ )

“Uh, anyway,” he shakes his head, willing his cheeks to return to normal. Seriously, what is _wrong_ with him. “I liked knowing that I would always have an excuse to talk to you... you know, if nothing else worked." 

Marinette humors him with a smile. She hasn't quite relaxed. 

"You look surprised," Adrien comments. "Like you weren't expecting me to say ‘lucky charm’."

"Oh. You know, well. It's such a common Ladybug catchphrase and all." 

"Yeah," he admits. "But even before that."

"Oh. Well. I wasn't sure what you were referring to when you said you still have something of mine." 

Adrien is surprised. "Other than the lucky charm?" Marinette shrugs, but Adrien can't let it go. Risking a terrible faux _paw_ , he asks, "Sorry, but—am I forgetting something?"

Marinette laughs. "No, I don't think so. I don't think you could forget something you never learned about in the first place."

"What?" Adrien leans forward. His knees are starting to smart from leaning too hard into the hardwood, but he won’t let that stop him. “Wait, what do you mean?”

"Indeed, I may or may not have been the culprit behind one or two more items,” she drops, _slyly—_ like Chat—as she casually shuffles the index cards in front of her, already moving them along before Adrien has even caught up in the first place. “But... I think I'd prefer to keep those to myself for now."

Adrien tilts his head at her. "Why? Like a game?"

"More like... I think, like with Ladybug's heart, you like the idea of who gave you these things. If you find out it was really me, you might be disappointed."

Adrien watches her shuffle the cards; he can feel his eyebrows doing the _Plagg_ -thing—the twisted eyebrow expression that Plagg likes to take all the credit for. “How would you know?”

Marinette’s hands still as she glances up at him, all the crisp index cards trapped in a fresh white arch. She looks back at him, and Adrien holds firm; he wants to respect Marinette’s space for secrets, he really does, _but_.

“I mean it,” he says, because he knows she will listen. “How do you know I wouldn’t be grateful for them?”

Marinette taps the bundle to her lap, letting the loose cards flutter into a neat, tidy pile. Without looking up at him, “No matter who gave them to you?”

“How about, _because_ of who gave them to me.”

He sees her smirk start to curl before he sees the rest of her expression; when she lifts her gaze to him and sees her wry acquiescence, he is perhaps not quite as satisfied as he’d expected to be.

“All right,” she says, softly. “Fair enough, I guess. How about: the next time I see one of the items I gave you… I let you know that it’s from me. Okay?”

Adrien checks her expression. Considers her proposition with a tilt to his head. “Like a game?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says, and this time she is definitely laughing _at_ him, but he doesn’t mind. “Like a game, I guess. If that’s how you want to look at it. You keep up a steady supply of materials, and if I see anything familiar when we meet up, I’ll let you know what I made for you.”

“ _Made?_ ”

Marinette’s eyes widen impossibly—before they are hidden completely behind two stubborn palms. The index cards tumble into her lap with an, “ _Agh!!_ ” 

Somehow, impossibly, surprisingly, Adrien is grinning over this: this isn’t even all that funny, and it’s not like he finds Marinette’s discomfort _amusing_ in the slightest (reassuring, maybe; flattering, _maybe_ ), but her easy-fluster does lend an especially light and colorful warmth to the room, and for some reason Adrien finds himself being comforted and encouraged in the face of so, so much shared awkwardness.

“You’ll really tell me when you see it?” he presses, and he feels himself lighting up—almost like it feels when the Miraculous ignites and the suit spirals out from the hidden darkness of the universe onto his existence, when his eyes glow with power and knowledge and confidence, when the rest of him feels faster, _smarter_ , more ready for anything.

“Ugh, _yes_.”

“And _when_ you gave it to me,” Adrien adds, grinning like the Cheshire plush on her desk, clasping tight to a last-minute stipulation that he can’t deny himself, silently begging please, please, _please_. 

“Ugh, and _when!_ ”

Marinette’s melodrama—amazing, how much of that exists in so small and courteous a person?? Amazing, how he’d never had the chance to see this before??—expands outward so much and so quickly that her small form simply cannot take it, and Marinette ends up falling back onto the hardwood in a tightly-compacted line of awkward-discomfort, and Adrien hardly realizes it, when he’s grinning and leaning over her.

He’s not leaning _over_ -leaning over her, his rapid-firing brain convinces himself, in the split second that he takes to recognize that he is suddenly right next to her, hovering his face and shoulders high above where she has all but collapsed back onto the floor. He is merely getting a closer look, he is being _supportive_ , he is making sure she hasn’t received a concussion from her fall back onto the hardwood, and then she lowers her hands from her eyes onto her cheeks, and then he is _leaning over her_.

She stares. His grin slips, then slips away completely.

His mind is a simple reel of _!!!!!_ and then, in pure madness, out comes, “Are you okay?” 

For some wild, inexplicable reason, neither of them are moving. Adrien notices this.

“I think… I’m having a sense of deja vu,” she answers, oddly thoughtful and pensive, you know, given the situation. “Only, last time, you were under me.”

Adrien blushes a dark and _robust_ , beet-red. 

“Oh! _Oh!_ I meant—! _AGH_ —! I meant—please forget! I said anything! Please!” Marinette’s hands press into her eyes, blocking out light and shapes and perhaps _memory_ , but, at the very least, Adrien _hopes_ , the sight of him completely and utterly speechless as he continues to do absolutely nothing about anything. His face is on fire.

She tries in vain to explain: “I meant _yesterday!_ ” she almost whines beneath her muffled hands. “When the Earthshaker attacked the school and—you know what I meant!”

“Uh…”

On the one hand, Adrien does; he _hears_ what she is saying, he _knows_ what she means, he understands completely, it’s totally reasonable, it even make _sense;_  on the other hand. 

The other hand.

“Sorry. God, that was embarrassing. I warned you that I was super spastic… Hey, are you okay?”

His body seizes back—as if Plagg has suddenly decided to dig his claws _in_ —but no, it’s just the sight of Marinette peering up at him now, lifting herself up onto forearms to check _his_ face and, “I’m okay,” he blurts, because now that he’s sitting upright he thinks he’s maybe in control of his vocal chords again, until, “Are you okay?

Marinette takes a full moment to look at him, and he’s trying to think about anything else, to look anywhere but at Marinette in the eye because then she will _see_ what is on his face, what is in his _head_ , and the only thing worse for their newly-seeded friendship besides shaking her trust in him by pressuring her to spill secrets would be to _shake her trust in him by._ By what. By this? By anything.

“Adrien.”

It’s more of an automatic response than an actual decision, but he turns his head to face Marinette when she calls: Marinette has not technically moved from her position on the floor, but by some impossible design, she actually looks rather comfortable now— _cozy_ , almost—as she watches him with an expression that is becoming exceptionally familiar.

She grins up at him, half-abashed but genuine. “I’m okay,” she says, like it’s an inside joke the share, which is nice, but but extremely disconcerting, because Adrien is pretty positive that he's yet to learn it.

And then she sits up, slow and controlled and sighs a laugh, all in the space that it takes for Adrien to realize that _this_ probably fits the bill for an answer to the questions that Adrien has always wondered about in the deepest, lamest sections of his lonely, drama-watching brain, like, _do teenagers really do that? Do they really accidentally get close enough to… to?_

“Sorry,” he says, immediately, because he realizes he hasn’t actually said it yet. “I didn’t realize how close I’d gotten. I was just—I was really interested in what you were saying about the… gifts. It never occurred to me,” he rambles, “that someone might have made me something… like. Aside from a professional clothing line, I mean.” 

Her smile turns a little sad, and he’s not sure why. He’s noticed that his stories about his life before joining high school have so far had this effect on her, sure, but this time it feels a little different.

“Well... it’s not a professional clothing line,” she shrugs. “I can promise that.” 

Five hundred sentences string themselves together on Adrien’s tongue, but none of them make the cut: _I would be happy with anything you gave me_ , he thinks. _I wouldn’t ask you to promise me anything_. _I wouldn’t mind seeing a professional clothing line from you someday_. _I’d be happy with anything_ _you’d want to give me_.

“That’s okay,” he says, and means it, because that’s all he can; all he can do is smile, and wait, and hope that, for now, she can read the rest on his face. He thinks she maybe sort of does, because her mouth is doing that little ‘o’ again, the one he saw today in school as they left the homeroom, the one he remembers seeing underneath a black umbrella on a rainy day after school, the first time he’d truly gotten to see her face without the thrum of adrenaline and anxiety and the overwhelming conviction of  _she hates me_ sliding through his blood.

Marinette snaps her gaze back down to the scattered pile of index cards on the floor. “Hm,” she announces suddenly, and makes quick, focused work of tidying them up. “Now seems like a good time to start studying, right?”

Adrien falters for a moment. What are they doing again? Is that why he came over here—studying?

“Uh, yeah. Let’s do it.”

“Ah. Yeah… let’s.”

 

//

 

The most miraculous thing about the whole afternoon, of course, isn’t that Adrien, who is actually a master in the art of self-discipline, manages to study.

It’s that Adrien manages to study while Marinette gets _distracted by every little thing_ , and runs around the room constantly, and is always switching spots, and sends papers flying _everywhere_ , and is constantly getting distracted by her phone, and, “Marinette, will you _please_ sit down?” 

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, sorry. Hang on—just got a text from Nino.” 

Adrien sits up, and suddenly every nerve is live-wired and uncomfortable and sharp. “What did he say?” 

Marinette absently shakes her head as she plops into the desk chair and scrolls down through what appears to be quite a few text messages… “It’s mostly just explaining how Alya noticed he’s been off all day, and how she pretty much cornered him after school and got him to open up about it.”

His heart is a loud, swollen mess inside his ribcage, and he can feel it pressing on his bones, his lungs, with every staccato beat. “I can’t decide if that’s more a testament to her being a really good friend… or a really good journalist.” 

“Hm... With Alya, it’s funny how often it’s because of both.”

Adrien waits for her to make another comment, but when she instead only continues to scroll through— _up, down, back to the top_ —her messages. “Is everything... okay?”

Marinette looks over to where he is finishing up the last packet of study materials they’ve put together. Hastily puts her phone to sleep.

“Yeah, sorry,” Marinette lowers herself onto the floor nearby, leaving her phone atop her desk. “Just thinking about Nino.”

Adrien’s chest feels very tight. “Ah.”

Marinette glances up at him, a curious gleam in her eye. “You know what’s going on,” she ventures, “don’t you?” 

His heart rises into his throat; he swallows it down.

“I know that he’s been… preoccupied today,” Adrien hedges, “But Nino hasn’t told me anything.” It's not  _technically_ a lie.

Marinette ponders him for another moment, then slowly nods her head. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Honestly, you would probably know better than me.” Also not a lie.

She looks over at him. He isn’t sure what she heard in his tone, but he’s pretty sure it’s the same bitter wisp of _does this sound really uncomfortable_? that he'd heard, himself.

“You think so? Because I’ve known him longer?” Marinette’s brows furrow. “Hmm… maybe for some things. But Nino and you are so close.”

 _Are we?_ and, more tightly, _So are you._

“Interesting that Alya managed to get to the bottom of it, though,” he changes the subject. “I wonder if Nino was expecting…” _Such a late night visit._ “An investigation of sorts.”

“Ha, well. He can’t be too surprised, really.” 

Adrien is about to agree and write the whole thing off and change the topic as quickly as humanly possible, but something about her tone and expression gives him pause. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he was clearly bothered by something all day. You saw that, too. Alya caught on by like the end of first period, and was trying to pick his brain all day throughout school, and she told me last period that she was going to talk to him.” She pouts, just a little, and Adrien realizes he’s never seen it before. “I just didn’t realize she was going to leave school so quickly...”

“Is that how Alya is?” he asks, and he’s suddenly worried for even more reasons he cannot name. “ She digs until she gets to the bottom of all her friends’ stories?”

“Maybe not that intense,” Marinette laughs. “But Alya’s really perceptive… for better or worse, but usually better, and she’s one of the strongest people I know.”

Adrien picks at the staple holding together a packet. “Nino likes telling that kind of stuff to Alya, then?” ( _Does he tell this stuff to you?_ )

The look Marinette gives him is surprised, strange; she holds his gaze for a beat too long. “Well… yes,” she answers, and stares at him even harder, like she’s expecting him to have something more to say.

“Yes?” Adrien repeats. “Why are you… is it just my imagination, or are you being really, really pointed with this right now?” 

Marinette leans back to take in the fuller sight of him. Adrien realizes in this moment that there is something that Marinette is clearly not telling him, but she refuses to say it out loud. 

“What am I missing?” he asks.

“Adrien… when’s the last time you really talked to Nino about what he’s been up to?” she starts, wetting her lips, biting the bottom one, and Adrien has to pull his gaze back to her eyes to remind himself that she’s trying to tell him something, starts to recognize that she’s choosing each word with deliberate care. “When’s the last time you… asked?”

Adrien isn’t sure.

“Asked? About what? How his day was? About his hobbies? Alya?” He sees Marinette’s face. “ _Alya?_ ”

“Have you asked?” Marinette repeats, like this is the key to some secret portal of knowledge, but no, of course he hasn’t, he hasn’t thought about it, and surely Nino would have said something if anything had changed… right? 

“Yeah, no,” he answers, as a few more dots click into place. “Not yet.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Are they… they’re together?” He sees Marinette's face. "They _are?_ "(How long? Since when?)

Marinette holds his gaze, but says, very firmly and clearly, neither a denial nor a confirmation, “You should ask him.”

Then Marinette looks to the index cards she’s packing up, thoughtful. Adrien knows it's probably silly to feel weird about this kind of thing—Nino is entitled to his own private thoughts, of course; and someone like Nino keeping this kind of long-kept secret from someone like Adrien probably doesn't actually mean anything—but.

There's a weird feeling he can't shake.

 

//

 

Fifteen minutes later, and Adrien has mostly pushed the questions from his mind. For now, anyway.

But it’s almost time to leave, and he doesn’t want to be distracted as he tells Marinette goodbye. He’s been texting Nathalie super diligently all afternoon, and the car is probably already leaving his house by now, despite his attempt to ask permission to stay and take the Dupain-Cheng family up on their invitation for dinner. ( _Next time!_ they’d reassured him, and all he could do was smile, and hope.) He and Marinette are chatting and laughing about lighter things—the spring weather, the proverbial light at the end of the school year-tunnel, favorite parts about summertime, and Adrien is thinking of the best way to ask, _Do you want to maybe do something together over summer vaca_ —

Their phones buzz simultaneously. When they check, they see it’s a group message between the four of them, initiated by Alya: 

> _we should meet up soon to talk about the miraculous_ — _there’s been a new development, and it may change the game_

Adrien reads in real-time as Marinette silently taps out a new text, which he reads on his phone a moment later: _What do you mean?_

 _i mean_ , Alya types, _that thanks to chat noir, we have some new theories. nino and i processed the sound clips he acquired last night from an impromptu late-night visit from chat, and we have good news and bad news._

> _the good news is that both sound recordings still have the appropriately scrambled disappearing acts when we try to run the pattern-recognition equipment on them._
> 
> _the bad news is that nino is also starting to think, for reasons he’s not really one-thousand percent committing to sharing just yet, ladybug may be in more danger than chat._

_When should we talk?_ Adrien texts, deliberately not looking at Marinette; out of the corner of his eye, he can see (feel) her staring at her phone. 

> _tomorrow_ , _after school. marinette, can we use your room as a base again?_

“Marinette,” Adrien looks up finally, when half a minute has passed and she hasn’t replied. “Do you want us to come over tomorrow?” 

Her face is a thousand miles away. She’s clicking a pen she’s found on the floor: open, close, open, close.

“Yeah,” she answers him. “That’s fine,” and then goes back to thinking.

Adrien sends one more uncertain glance her way, eyes her methodical pen-clicking, and then carefully types out:

> _Marinette says it’s okay. Tomorrow, then._

 

//

 

When Nathalie signals her arrival, not long after that, Marinette and he both help to tidy the study materials into various places and piles at her workstation. Suddenly, they are both standing near her desk, on the brink of goodbye, and Adrien doesn’t know where to put his hands.

“Thanks for today,” he says, half-grimacing at his ingrained politeness. “Sorry about… all that.” 

Marinette’s smile is sweet, but still distracted. She hasn’t been herself at all since the text messages started rolling in, and Adrien is restless. Is she that worried about Nino? What is Nino so worried about? _Why didn’t Nino mention Alya or Chat Noir or anything_ —but now is not the time. 

“I’m sorry I’m so out of it,” she apologizes right back. “I had a lot of fun studying with you today. We should definitely keep it up and ace our exams, right?” 

“Ah... yeah. Definitely,” he agrees, but it feels weird, because everything about his mouth and jaw feels sluggish and foreign. But then Nathalie's text chimes in, and he doesn't even have to check his phone to know that she’s already outside, waiting. “Ah, well. Time to go.”

Marinette’s glimmer takes on its familiar friendliness—the one he’s still not entirely used to seeing directed at him. “Guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, then?” 

“At school, and then after,” he nods, unnecessarily, and his awkwardness turns his subtle nod into a half-formed bow, and he’s so professional and formal he could _hit_ himself.

“You should text me,” she tells him through the smile, hands folded at her front, rocking back onto her heels. “We can keep each other updated on our studying progress. Good motivation, right? It’ll be like we’re still studying together, even if you’re back home.”

Adrien blinks down at her, astounded. “Right…”

“ _Marinette!”_ calls a gentle voice from below. “ _Adrien! Looks like there’s a very nice car outside waiting for you?”_

And then a much deeper one, “ _Adrien, does your bodyguard like macaroons? Wait a minute—everyone loves macaroons!”_

Marinette is laughing, and Adrien is chuckling with her, and then she moves past him to the trapdoor. “Well,” she says, looking up at him as she leans down to start her descent on the ladder. “Time to go, right?”

Adrien really doesn’t want to.

 

//

 

Adrien leaves, and Adrien texts Marinette, and he thinks, and he worries, but he is hopeful.

Chat Noir doesn’t arrive at her latch tonight.

He knows Marinette knows why.

 

//

 

Nino dreads arriving at school that morning. So many questions. The last thing he wants to do is sit through Particle Physics and pretend to pay attention; maybe Marinette wouldn’t be opposed to skipping? Just this once? Just one class, so they can finally talk? 

Yeah, right. Like they’d be able to fit the whole conversation into only one class-block. 

“Never have I wished for an akuma attack more,” Nino mumbles to himself as he passes by the local pharmacy, clutching the straps of his backpack. The meaning of his words strike him suddenly, four steps later, and Nino hurriedly glances up to make sure no one might have heard; honestly, _wishing_ for an akuma attack? _What are you thinking?_  

He’s got a plan. It’s kind of messy, and has too many holes, and all of the possible paths pretty much revolve around Marinette still getting frustrated with him and the situation no matter which way he turns it, but it’s gotta be done. With this, Nino puffs himself up and pushes himself forward, clinging onto that sense of feeble determination all the way until he reaches the school. 

Where Alya and Adrien and Marinette are already waiting for him.

“Oh, shit,” Nino says, first thing, as soon as he’s within hearing range. He should be quieter, in case a detention-slip-happy teacher overhears him, but he’s too surprised to mind. “Am I late?”

“More like,” says Marinette by way of sympathetic greeting, “We’re all exceptionally early.” And then, a nod of understanding, “I don’t think any of us are really sleeping easy this week.”

Nino catches Adrien turning to Marinette like this is a surprise to _him_ , which is interesting, when did the two of them start standing so close to each other, but ah, no, Alya is looking at him with the really meaningful _I know what you’re thinking_ look, which means that it’s time for him to speak.

“How feasible would it be for us to eat lunch at your house, Marinette?” he asks. “Would it be worth it to start this Big Talk the middle of the school day?”

“We could do that, yeah,” she nods, every inch of her determined and serious, and Nino is dead-tired, he knows she is too, but it helps knowing that Marinette _knows_ now. 

Alya is theorizing something about what they'd discussed the previous afternoon, so Nino takes a quick glance to check on how Marinette is faring and— _oh, shit_. 

Nino hastily looks away, pretending to put his undivided attention back onto what Alya's saying, and unabashedly avoiding Marinette's pointed stare. _So, yeah_. At least she knows now, right? Even if he's not... out of the clear just yet.

With difficulty, Nino gulps. 

 

//

 

It’s as they’re walking into school, that Adrien realizes, fully and immediately—they’re dating.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were together?” Adrien pulls Nino aside at the first opportunity, in a hallway after third period, while the girls are off somewhere on their own. “I would have congratulated you sooner.”

“Oh, well, I thought about mentioning it, but Alya’s philosophy is sorta… you know. It’s the journalist part about her, where she thinks, ‘oh, let people will figure it out in their own time. If asked, then tell, by why not just let people realize it for themselves’?”

“But… how long have you been together? It seems like it’s been weeks," his tone takes on something vaguely-accusatory. "You didn’t mention it all this time?”

Nino looks at him for a long moment, then shrugs. “Well… you didn’t ask?”

 

//

 

Things don’t really improve from there.

Adrien sits at his desk all the way through fourth period, flicking and spinning his pen and not hearing anything Miss Bustier is saying (it’s fine, he’s read the current unit’s novel like twice already before with Nathalie, and he has the three essays and notes from at least one analysis debate with Nathalie to prove it) and wondering how he should apologize to Nino. He knows he should do it as Chat Noir, of course, but he feels like maybe Adrien should too… but why? For what? 

He’s still thinking about it all the way up until lunch. Nathalie texts him as soon as the bell rings, asking him to check in with his location: _Why don’t you just put a tracker in me?_ he wants to snap back, as he texts out a simple, polite reply instead. _What could possess my father to possibly be so curious about my whereabouts at lunchtime? It’s lunch. I’m going to eat._

But first, Alya is making a quick run to the computer lab to grab something, Marinette is making a quick stop home, and that leaves… Nino and Adrien, walking to the park for lunch.

Funny, how Adrien had searched for the opportunity to take Nino aside earlier, and now here they are, just the two of them. Like it used to be. 

Adrien and Nino walk in weird silence.

“If I’d known it would bother you so much,” Nino says eventually, “I would have talked to Alya, and told you about it. I’m sorry if it feels weird because I didn’t bring it up.”

But now Adrien is frustrated, because that’s _not_ why he was bothered. Nino didn’t tell him about his relationship? Honestly, four, three months ago, would that have even mattered to him? Adrien doesn’t think so. It’s not that it even bothers him now. There’s just so… much.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” Adrien says. It’s not perfect, but hopefully it conveys enough.

Yet Nino comes to a halt on the sidewalk, just a block away from the park. Adrien pauses, and looks back, and meets Nino’s gaze.

“Dude,” Nino says, flabbergasted. “Dude, is this about… is this because of _Ladybug?_ ” he asks, as Adrien’s eyes blow wide. “With the elevator? And the civilian-contact thing? Are you still thinking about that?” Nino’s expression flickers through something too fast to name. “Wait a minute. Of course you are.”

“Nino, that doesn’t have anything to do with it,” even though it sort of really does—but not in the ways Nino is probably imagining, not for reasons Nino could ever know.

“ _Dude_ ,” Nino repeats, and there’s a thread of frustration there. “It’s not like that! If I’d known you were letting this swim around in your head, I would have told you this, too! But like—I also would’ve thought that you learning about Alya and me would’ve cleared this up, too!” 

“I didn’t say you were _romantically_ involved,” Adrien snaps back, before he can help himself, and he forces the two of them to keep walking.

“Technically, you didn’t say _anything._ ”

“Nino, drop it,” Adrien snaps, pushing forward, with a knot in his brow. Nino tries to keep his pace. They’re almost to the park. “It’s not a big deal. You’re dating Alya. I get it. You’re keeping in touch with Ladybug—whatever. You’re always with Marinette now, it’s fine—”

“Wait, _what?_ ”

“—but in the future you could at least, you know, _talk_ to me.”

“What do you mean, ‘always with Marinette’? Where did this come from? Have you taken a look at your buddy track record over the last few days, by the way? Do you even realize who you’re hanging out with these days?" 

“Nino,” says Adrien. “Drop it.”

For the record: Hawkmoth has really, really fucking terrible timing.

 

//

 

For the record: Ladybug’s, with all of its cosmic magic and luck and brilliance, is worse.

 

//


	7. only trying to help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _10/3/17_. HELLO, ALL, LONG LONG LONG TIME, NO SEE. ♡ according to my once-a-month updating schedule, this chapter is long overdue and not abiding by the "mid-twenties" date trend, but regardless, here it is. i am still busy living life in japan, so the updates are pretty sporadic. thanks for your patience!
> 
> this story will be finished in nine chapters! hopefully this will be done long before xmas, and then it will be onto finishing up the next WIP. ♡ thanks for the continued love and support!
> 
>  **BETA'd** by the lovely **ABIGAIL**.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com)

****

//

 

"You can't be serious," Adrien hears Nino say, as the mammoth akuma emits another gruesome shriek. "Now?!"

Adrien takes action.

"Let's go," he declares, and turns on his heel. His head is still spinning from it as he races down the sidewalk—or maybe that's just from how quickly the afternoon has turned on its head; Plagg’s claws are are just barely digging into his skin.

“ _Kid_ ,” Plagg hisses through the commotion. “ _Where are you going?”_

He's not sure where he's running to, but Nino is following him, which is what matters; as long as he gets Nino safely out of the akuma's way, first, then he can figure out how to “accidentally” getting separated, and then hightail it back to the battle zone before Ladybug has time to miss him.

Adrien's frown pulls deeper as he runs.

On a whim, Adrien ducks into the first alley he sees. Maybe if he cuts the corners and disappears around the bend too fast for Nino to catch, he won't have to find an excuse—?

The faint and fading trail of pink glitter dust is the first thing his mind registers.

Adrien comes to a shocked halt.

"Ladybug!" Nino gasps from behind him, and sure enough—there she is.

Had she just transformed?

She's smirking at them, in that freshly cool way of hers—calm and collected and confident, but oh, oh god, she must have. She must have just.

How close had he been to stumbling upon her civilian self, just now? _What if I had accidentally seen?_

Adrien is trapped inside his thoughts, inside his own body, but Nino has no such qualms. He brushes past Adrien to go stand beside Ladybug without hesitation, like he’s used to it.

Adrien feels the moment like a cat whose fur is being stroked the wrong way.

"Quick!" Ladybug hisses, before anyone can say anything else. "Inside!"

They step through the backdoor of what must be a bookshop—Nino and Ladybug both look unsurprised that it is open, and further that the storage room they've entered is empty. Adrien looks around the dim shelves and wonders a silly question: have they been here before?

"Why are we in a bookshop?" Adrien asks aloud; if it's just a shade too demanding, then it's because of the anxiety, that's all. Plagg is a familiar and mostly-comforting weight upon his chest. _We have to get out of here._

Even though Adrien had directed the question to Ladybug, Nino answers: “If anyone sees us acting familiar," he says, "it could be dangerous. We can't be seen together at all."

"But Hawkmoth can't see us unless the akuma can see us," Adrien points out. "And anyway, it's just coincidental, that you and I ran into Ladybug."

"Once? Sure. Twice? Maybe. Three times? I dunno, man. I'd rather not risk it."

Adrien isn't sure why it rankles so much to be coached by Nino on how they should handle Hawkmoth; Nino makes a good point, and Adrien is usually happy to learn anything new he can.

Oh, wait. He knows why.

"You're right, Nino," Ladybug contemplates, tapping a finger to her lips. "We never know when one of his akumas will adapt a special sense of sight or something."

"I’ve actually been wondering if somebody might try to use us as bait sooner or later," Nino ponders, strangely somber and serious. "They could try to use us as friend-bait to lure you into a trap... which sucks." He changes tack. "But on the upside, this one looks pretty slow, doesn’t it?" Nino comments brightly, even though no one asked him. "What are you plannin’?"

Adrien’s gaze flits between them, like he’s watching a tennis match. Has Ladybug even looked at him once? _Am I even here?_ It’s not like he should be a concern for Ladybug in the midst of an attack… he’s safe, his father is not a hostage on top of a rooftop believing himself to be a butterfly or a bird or whatever, there’s no reason why Ladybug should pay a civilian any mind when there are more important matters to attend to. Right?

So why can’t he shake the feeling that Ladybug is deliberately ignoring him?

"It depends on how much he speeds up when he hits the water," Ladybug notes, mildly grim. "Any notes?"

"Wait," Adrien interrupts. "Why would he know?" He turns to Nino. "Why would you know?"

"Well, it’s not like I know for _sure_ , but I've been tracking akuma breakouts recently for patterns, especially which powers the old Man Butterfly tries to bestow upon them."

 _Since when?  
_ _Does Alya know?_

A particularly awful shriek reverberates through the walls, shaking into Adrien’s bones. Nino actually stumbles, but, to Adrien’s continued lack of surprise, Ladybug steadies him with a sure hand.

"I have to go," Ladybug announces. She looks imploringly at Nino and then, finally, _finally_ , at him.

There’s something that seems to falter in her expression, when her gazes catches his for just a fraction too long. Adrien's chest seizes up. She’s about to say something.

“Go on!” Nino urges, and Adrien’s stomach tumbles. The spell is broken, and whatever he’d been about to hear is now lost.

"I think he's headed toward the river for some reason,” Ladybug says instead, breathless, but she’s not looking at him anymore. She’s not looking at him at all. “Please avoid it! Stay together!“

And then she's gone.

The resulting silence is less of a physical experience and more like his mind has entered a fog; Adrien isn't really sure where he's standing right now.

Except.

"All right," Nino claps, once, in what Adrien feels is a very Marinette fashion. Adrien desperately tries to turn the tides of the annoyance crashing into his skull. "Lady's orders, eh?"

"Actually," Adrien says, before he knows what he is saying, before he can heed the gentle warning unspoken in the press of claws into his chest, "I really need to get home. My dad has been super specific about me staying out of the streets during an akuma attack." Which isn't at all a lie; his dad was quite clear about avoiding akumas at all costs.

"But, dude," Nino protests, "if you head back to your house now, you're heading out into the streets first. Right now, you're safer right here, right?"

"Right now, maybe, but what about in two minutes? The mansion has the most secure safety network, that's where I'm supposed to go. If there's any place anyone wants to avoid Hawkmoth's reach, it's my house."

He belatedly realizes that he hasn't invited Nino to come with him; clearly, Chat Noir can’t afford to, but Nino only sees Adrien.

Adrien has no way of knowing what Nino thinks he’s thinking. _I have no idea what anyone is thinking anymore._

Which. By the way.

"Nino... did you tell Ladybug how I feel about her?"

Nino startles so strongly that his body actually spazzes, half a recoil. "What?"

Adrien reconsiders, and rephrases his question. "Did you tell Ladybug's... civilian-self that I have... feelings for her?"

“I—was I? Was I… not supposed to?”

Nino flounders.

Adrien drowns.

His mouth becomes a hard line. He feels a chill was through him. "You told her,” he says.

"What?” Nino’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. “I just—remember? How I already told you that we talked about you? While I was in your car? The day you picked me up from the elevator incident—”

"So you talked about me?" Adrien demands. “You told her that I liked her.”

 _Chill_ , he can almost hear Plagg’s voice, can almost hear Plagg’s little heartbeat next to his frantically racing one. _Kid, you have to calm_ —

"Look, bro, _no_ , hold up!” Nino’s hands lift up, placatingly, so of course the whole move has the exact opposite effect. Plagg’s claws dig just a tiny bit deeper, like he’s actually trying to reach in and slow down Adrien’s heart; he better not find holes. “Man, Ladybug actually technically already _knew_ you like her, okay, she said, like, something to me like, 'it's not exactly hard to see how we both act around each other—'"

"And after that?” Adrien presses. “Did you keep talking about me?"

"Well, I—I just?”

"Why didn't you say anything to me?” his voice is rising now. _Cool it, Agreste_ , but he can’t. “You went AWOL."

" _Dude!_ ” Nino’s voice cracks. “I was only trying to help! You were so excited in the car after the elevator that I just thought—I assumed? Bro, I didn't say anything that you wouldn't want me to say!"

Adrien frowns.

"How would you know what I would or wouldn't want you to say?" Adrien demands, and he's so agitated now that his fingers are actually twitching; Ladybug is out there, alone, and the stress of that is raking down his bones. The akuma is a nasty one. "Did you ask me?"

"Adrien, I'm sorry!” Nino’s voice is still wavering. “I was just trying to help!"

A terrible, terrible thought occurs to him.

A memory of a rooftop and apologies and the start of a distance he couldn’t ever outpace and _somebody broke my heart_ ( _by accident_ ) and _I don’t want to do the same to you._

_(They don’t really have any idea.)_

He can feel the first chilled drop of a nasty revelation slowly dripping down his spine. His fingertips are numb, or tingling, and there’s a weird sort of sick feeling to the very bottom of his stomach, like his heart got lost. _It couldn’t possibly…_ there’s no way Ladybug had meant… him?

(And yet?)

"Nino,” he says, and his head is actually strikingly clear, even if his skin is littered with claw marks, and inside his chest it feels hard and hollow. “Tell the truth: has she felt differently towards me since you told her?”

Nino' mouth opens. His eyes behind his glasses are big, and glassy, and wide. His hat sits askew on his head. Adrien’s brow furrows as Nino drops his gaze.

"I... yeah. She did."

Adrien’s whole body fires up, and then goes shockingly cold.

Adrien glares. He glares hard. Nino looks up at him, and flinches at whatever he sees.

“Adrien, I… I’m sorry, man.”

He knows. He knows, but he doesn’t have time to deal with this. And, if he’s being honest—he doesn’t really want to.

“So what happened to ‘just letting people figure it out for themselves’?”

He leaves.

//  
  


He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it.

 _Somebody broke my heart_ . Yeah, well, in order for it to break, it meant that she’d been holding it out for someone to take, hadn’t she? By someone who hadn’t _meant to do it_ , or whatever she’d said. Someone who wasn’t Chat Noir.

He’d just never expected it to be Adrien Agreste.

//

But that’s so stupid.

There’s no way an actual superhero would start to have feelings for a random kid on the street she’s saved just once or twice. No, it’s just—that’d be, completely—

Impossible.

//  
  


He’s pretty sure he almost throws up in the alley where he plans to transform, but there’s nothing inside him—just broken air.

“Kid, kid, _what_ !” Plagg is flittering from ear to ear, and he actually sounds well and truly worried—panicked even, but that might just be because Adrien can’t stand straight. “ _Breathe!_ ”

“We don’t—have time for this,” Adrien rasps, and before Plagg can protest, he lifts up his ring, and summons the strength he needs.

//  
  


 _So that does it, then._ There’s not a single one of his friendships that hasn’t been rattled this week.

Not a single one.

//  
  


Ladybug is in her element today. Chat Noir notices. She’s got a kind of aura to her that’s unusually bold, that rings especially of self-assurance and calm. Is it because she is so much stronger? Or because today, Adrien is feeling so much weaker?

No, this feels like something that is coming from inside Ladybug; Adrien might be exuding his own brand of slow-moving uncertainty, but Ladybug is burning too brightly to feel the shadows his hesitation casts.

He loves her.

He’s always loved her. He'd thought he'd loved her since the day he met her, but the more he’d gotten to know her, the more he'd realized just how much _more_ room his feelings had had to grow.

He misses her.

//

Does she even have any idea?

//  
  


Something about the battle shifts; Chat feels no different, yet the whole thing feels as if the world has tilted on its axis; his limbs move like lightning, reflexes moving beyond the realm of usual comprehension; it’s as if he’s given all control of his body to the benign power of the Destructive Miraculous, allowing it to read his intentions and put them into action without a second thought; he is stronger, faster, and in the meantime, Chat Noir blessedly doesn’t need any room to think.

And after the akuma is purified, and the unnamed citizen is returned to herself, Ladybug spies the single remaining light on his ring with unreadable eyes. She turns her gaze to his, a thousand open questions, and he thinks of the story he has to tell; it feels like a thousand years ago; he has never felt so vulnerable.

“Chat—“

“I have to tell you something,” he says. “About… something I did last night. There’s a chance you already know what it is... and either way you’re going to hate it, but I need to explain. Tonight.”

He watches those words sink into Ladybug’s expression. She nods, thoughtful and determined and patient and expectant, and the weight of all of her faith in him is just a little too much to bear at the moment. He’d almost forgotten just how it feels to have his partner look him in the eye, and trust him.

“Ten?” she asks, softly.

Chat Noir gently shakes his head, and the subtle tightness below his ribcage that tells him Plagg’s pushy little cosmic energy is warning him that he only has barely over a minute left is starting to pull, so he has to push the panic down, don’t think about it, don’t mess this up.

“Eleven,” he says, just as soft. “There’s… something I need to do first.”

Ladybug tilts her head at him. He has the strangest feeling that she sees right through him, but she doesn’t say anything.

“All right,” she whispers.

He doesn’t say, _I need to go_. They can both feel when the air stretches and pulls in cosmic warning, and then Chat Noir takes off, and it’s only three blocks and all the luck in the world that he makes it into the alley just in time to de-transform.

//  
  


Plagg is lecturing him about transforming ‘responsibly’, of all things, about how the Miraculous is there to help him, but it’s a cosmic _power_ , it’s not just supposed to be a short-term band-aid for—

(Maybe it isn't fair of him to expect so much from Nino.

Adrien had been excited for Nino to talk about him to Ladybug, last Nino knew… and just because Adrien’s situation had changed didn’t mean that Nino knew that automatically, did it? Nino wasn’t a mind-reader, he was only Adrien’s best friend, he was only the person in the whole world that was supposed to know him best—)

// 

By the time Marinette opens the trapdoor and climbs into her room, Nino is already waiting at the chaise.

Marinette pauses, and she just stares at him. Nino can’t really be bothered to get up.

“Your mom let me in like twenty minutes ago,” he explains, even though she didn’t ask for it, and she probably doesn’t even need it. Does his voice sound as awful and as monotone as he feels? He thinks it might.

Tikki flies out Marinette’s bag with only a half-flip. She lets out a ferocious yawn.

“I’m going to take a seven hour nap,” she murmurs through the tail-end of her yawn, and on her way up into the loft, she pauses only briefly to scoop up the small package of chocolate-covered peanuts that Nino has left out for her on the desk. “I’ll be up here… Nighty-night.”

Nino glances up to where Tikki languidly loopty-loops her way into her fortress of nap-time. “She does know that it’s not even dinnertime yet, yeah?”

Marinette is not having it.

“What happened back there?” she demands.

Nino carries on, as if he’d not heard her. “I told her that you were safe from the akuma but you were on the other side of town, and you were going to meet me back here as soon as the coast was clear. Alya is running the last few scans of material this afternoon, and then I’m heading over to her place later tonight to dig in.”

Marinette says nothing. Instead, she gently closes the trapdoor behind her, silently walks her way over and sits herself next to him. She lies down, and curls.

There’s a horrible tension in the air: Marinette is exhausted and Nino is anxious and he knows _she_ knows he knows that she is merely taking a very, very long moment to think of the words as to how best to start what neither of them really want to talk about.

Unfortunately, now there are _many_ things that Nino should probably tell her about, even if he doesn’t really want to.

“Chat Noir put you in danger,” she says quietly, staring at the big, black cat plushie-thing that she keeps on her desk. Nino looks down at her, and waits. “He came over to your apartment in the middle of the night, and pushed you into doing some technical recordings after he and Ladybug had already argued about it. Why?”

Was that only just last night? It’d occupied so much of his headspace for so much of the day, but so much has happened in the last hour or so… Nino had already almost forgotten. 

"I think... he trusts your good luck more than you do,” he answers at last. “I think Chat Noir thought he was doing the right thing, yeah?”

Marinette considers this. "I think you're right. I also think he let his emotions get the best of him... Given how often I tend to do the same,” she sighs, “and how intimately I've recently gotten to know just how far my luck _doesn't_ reach... I think I am pretty qualified to say that about him. He got carried away, and now he's pulling you down with him."

Ouch.

“Not gonna lie,” Nino starts off. He’s speaking quietly, like he doesn’t want to spook her, yes, but also because he’s more bone-tired than he thought he was. “It was… pretty weird. Chat Noir… he seems like a pretty laid-back guy, but he’s got… some pretty intense moments.”

“He does,” says Marinette, with that far-off look; Nino wonders where she really is right now, and fights back the urge to reach out and touch his hand to her shoulder. “He spends most of his time trying to play them off like a game, so he doesn’t have to be taken seriously, but I’ve seen glimpses of the real thing.”

“They’re… pretty intense.”

“He’s one of the kindest people I know,” she answers, and Nino feels the meaning of it with every fiber of his being, “but he’s also impulsive and rash and he can be just as selfish as any other human…” Marinette frowns. “I can, too.”

She cuts him off before he has the chance to argue.

“But when you and I work together,” she begins anew, “I’m Marinette. I’m a civilian, and you’re my civilian friend. There's no one to suspect anything of our involvement; everything is executed in secret… When Chat came to see you last night, and he wore a mask. If anyone saw that, they could mark you as Chat Noir's civilian ally."

Something occurs to Nino.

"What about you, as Marinette Dupain-Cheng? Aren't _you_ Chat Noir’s civilian ally?"

( _Or_ , Nino thinks, but absolutely does not, would not, _will_ not, say: _a romantic interest?_

But for real, he's pretty sure this is the baseline or eighty-percent of superhero movies. _Somebody's always gotta try to kidnap the damn romantic interest,_ he thinks, and _Shut up, Nino_ , and _I’m losing my damn mind.)_

"Marinette is Ladybug," she answers, breaking him from his weird-ass thoughts. "I can protect myself in ways that you can't... It was too great a risk to come to directly, and he should have known that.” Marinette’s expression changes, finally. “If he was spotted, it’s just one more reason for Hawkmoth to mark you. A big one."

Nino isn’t so sure he agrees, even if he sees Marinette’s point, and he knows she has a right to be concerned. Honestly, he was already a little concerned anyway, so maybe he’s really just not being concerned enough?

And then, for half a wild second, Nino wonders: Would Hawkmoth ever mistake _him_ for the romantic interest?

“Nino?”

“Uh… or... maybe Chat has a good point with this?” Nino tries. “Maybe Hawkmoth has already guessed that Ladybug and I have stayed connected, at least to some extent, and he's on the lookout for your secret identity? Maybe he’s checking my personal contacts,” Nino starts to roll, because this has been lowkey bothering him all night, all day, all afternoon. “Maybe it is better for him to come to me, since Chat Noir’s identity _is_ better protected anyway.”

“Of _course_ he is better protected... and so am I. That's why I'm concerned about _you_.”

There may or may not be a lump in Nino’s throat.

“Well, no, what I mean is... the way I look at it, I'm in danger either way. You know? It's not any more or any less, you know? I'm in just as much danger from a late night Chat Noir chat as I am by being your friend and Battle Buddy. And I'm okay with that. That’s fine, but it brings me to the reason why I’m starting to worry that you might actually be in more danger than anyone else. But me? That’s fi—”

The breath wheezes from his lungs as impact takes hold, and Nino recognizes that Marinette has sat up and clamped her arms around him. Her chin is digging hard into his shoulder, forehead tucked into his neck.

"...fine," he finishes, half-startled, half-awkward, half-awed.

Marinette clings. Nino hugs back.

"This sucks," she says, very quietly. He pats her head, feeling ridiculous, and a little star-struck, and very, very warm.

"Yeah," he says, still holding her. "I know."

They sit.

//  
  


Nino really wants to tell Marinette about what happened between him and Adrien—they’ve never had a blow-up quite like this before, and it sits in Nino’s chest in all of the worst ways. His stomach actually aches from it.

But there are more important matters at stake.

“Marinette,” he starts again, minutes later. “I really do think you’re in more danger than Chat Noir.”

She raises a brow at him that already has him jerking up the defensive argument he’d prepared, but instead of denying him out right, like she might have done a few weeks ago, she tilts her head at him, consideringly. “How so?”

Nino falters over his words for a moment. Was Marinette really willing to listen to his theories so easily now? _Hasn’t she for a while now?_ Another little voice chimes. _How long has this been going on for?_

Is Marinette finally starting to let herself trust others? With this? Fully??

Nino shakes himself out of it.

“Because I already know about your secret,” he rushes out, letting it roll off his chest. “Even though you never planned to tell me, you are more comfortable now with the secret being open… to me, at least. I mean—what if that affects something?”

Marinette sighs.

“You know… this is what I’ve been worrying about all along. My secret is already less safe—less safe than Chat’s, even. That’s why we can’t risk any more exposure for you… Don’t you see? My luck is already running out.”

“You don’t think that’s jumping the gun a little—?”

“I’m not supposed to be a superhero my whole life,” she announces, cutting into Nino’s spine. “The Good Luck of the Miraculous won’t be able to protect me forever, and it is already unable as it is to protect you… We’re pushing it, Nino. This can’t last forever.”

For a long time, Nino doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what he can say.

He knows she’s right.

And although he's warm and safe and in the company of a very best friend, for the first time since he’d been kidnapped by that akuma—just minutes before Ladybug swooped in, and barely half an hour before they’d both entered the fateful elevator together—Nino is well and truly scared.

//   
  


When he speaks, he asks, very softly, “ _Do you wish we could go back in time and stop us from getting trapped in that elevator?_ ”

“ _No_ ,” she whispers, at long last. “ _I don’t._ ”

//  
  


By the time Marinette heads downstairs to grab them some more snacks, he feels a little better… until he sees that there’s at least a dozen group text messages that they’ve missed. For better or worse, he reads the most recent first. 

> **ALYA:** NINO AND MARINETTE IF YOU ARE ALL RIGHT THEN PLEASE CHECK IN

Oh, dear. Okay, maybe not. 

 _Hey_ , he types out, _sorry—I just got my phone back to life_ , he lies. _I’m okay, and last I checked, wasn’t Marinette running home at the start of lunch to do an errand or something? I think she’s still home, maybe?_

And then, after a few gentle strokes to Tikki’s sleepy, napping head—she’d moved back down to the chaise because she missed his company— _and my chocolate_ , Nino huffs a laugh—he goes back to the start of the unread messages:

> **ALYA:** wow, this guy has such gross timing, doesn’t he? where was everyone when the attack sprang up? i was heading to the park from the computer lab, but had to double-back because he got right in our path 
> 
> **Adrien:** Nino and I were walking together to the park, and got caught up for a bit, but we ended up having to split up. Have you heard from Marinette?
> 
> **ALYA:** no not yet
> 
> **ALYA:** HEY, nino and mari, you guys haven’t responded since we split up for lunch, is everything still okay?
> 
> **ALYA:** also, really? caught up in what?
> 
> **Adrien:** We crossed paths with Ladybug. She checked in with Nino for a few minutes before she flew off to fight the akuma. Nino will have to fill you in.
> 
> **ALYA:** WHAT. REALLY. NINO IS THIS TRUE HOLY COW DID YOU TELL HER HOW KIT-KAT WENT ALL AWOL AND INVADED YOUR BEDROOM AND ALSO WE GOT THE TAPES TO SHOW SOME PRETTY POSITIVE RESULTS BUT also it raises some pretty disconcerting questions regarding the lady’s safety in particular?
> 
> **Adrien:** What kinds of safety questions?
> 
> **Adrien:** Also, maybe we shouldn’t be putting this in writing?
> 
> **ALYA:** adrien, my sweet summer child, i hear you, but i’ve learned so much in the last few months about data, and i promise this chat is so encrypted it’s practically in a tomb.
> 
> **Adrien:** Did you just make a pun?
> 
> **ALYA:** i have been listening to endless sound clips of the Pun Punisher for the last two hours on endless repeat. i cannot be held accountable for any such thing, currently.
> 
> **ALYA:** jeez, guys, where are you?? should i call marinette’s parents?
> 
> **Adrien:** Maybe?
> 
> **ALYA:** hey, you guys
> 
> **ALYA:** nino, did you head home after the akuma attack or did you take refuge at the bakery? y’all check your phones
> 
> **ALYA:** all right, if i don’t hear from you guys in like five minutes i’mma call mari’s mom
> 
> **ALYA:** NINO AND MARINETTE IF YOU ARE ALL RIGHT THEN PLEASE CHECK IN
> 
> **me:** Hey, sorry—I just got my phone back to life. I’m okay, and last I checked, wasn’t Marinette running home at the start of lunch to do an errand or something? I think she’s still home, maybe?
> 
> **ALYA:** man, you guys suck!! damn, i’m glad you’re okay
> 
> **me:** Sorry! Between running into a certain someone and then running away, I just didn’t have time to check my phone until I got back to my house.
> 
> **ALYA:** nah, nah, it’s fine, as long as you guys are fine
> 
> **Adrien:** So wait, has anyone actually heard from Marinette?
> 
> **ALYA:** yeah, she just messaged me, she’s home and she’s safe

//

Adrien stares down at his phone.

Without warning, he thinks back to all the moments he can remember from the past year or so; little moments, big days. Small things. Everyday things, like sitting close to each other in class (but barely talking), passing each other in the courtyard (wondering if he should wave); trying to say hello to her in the hallway, watching her dart away from him. (He hadn’t realized.)

Special things, like sharing a library table or a macaroon ( _or an umbrella_ ). Going to the concert together. His thoughts return back to the tournament. She’d liked him then. He’d been in her room and she’d liked him. What must that have been like?

Adrien lists. He paces. Plagg naps.

The day that the Horrificator struck... Nino's movie... they'd almost kissed then, hadn't they? Had she liked him then? What would have happened if they'd kissed? Would she have confessed sooner? Would he have realized?

He feels cheated, somehow.

More memories come spiraling in. The day the Evillustrator attacked, when she'd gone on a date with Nathaniel as part of Ladybug's plan to destroy the akuma... she'd liked Adrien then, too, hadn't she? And all along he'd been there, flirting and holding her close and fighting alongside her, without her ever knowing.

Hiding, running, lying. For all the secrets and the insecurity, for all that he’s gained, he’s still missing too many important things along the way, and he's tired of it.

He's so, so tired of it.

 _Would it be so bad_ , he wonders, _if she knew? Ladybug has a civilian contact... why can't I?_

They could finally bridge the two worlds together. Fewer lies, fewer secrets—someone to talk to, to share stuff with. Someone who would understand both his superhero life and his student life. _(I... could tell Ladybug_ , he reasons, _if she ever one day agreed_ , but would she ever truly know his civilian life? It'd feel more like sharing a story—not a shared setting.  

Not a shared world.)

But Marinette already knows so much about both of his lives—more than she probably realizes. How would she react if she learned that two of her friends are... one in the same?

She would be shocked, probably, but he can't imagine she would, what—be upset? Upset that he kept it from her? No, she would understand.

 _Would she be disappointed?_ a nagging voice wonders.

No.

Maybe he would have worried if she'd be disappointed before, but not anymore. Not after what they've been through. They actually know each other now: he knows that she is a super self-disciplined designer, and a sort of self-disciplined studier who absolutely cannot sit still for the life of her; he knows that she’s actually not very good at expressing herself in Mandarin, but is desperately eager to learn; she knows that he carries a canister of floss with him wherever he goes ( _dentist’s, photographers’, father's orders_ ) and she knows he can spin his pen over his thumb and he knows that she is really good at laughing with her eyes and Adrien isn't really sure why that last one feels any more important than the others, but it does.  

He pictures it, the moment of de-transformation: maybe one night, during a regular visit to her room. She'd promise him that she would see what he had to show her without forming any judgments of her own before he explained. He'd only make it halfway through the explanation, of course—he'd be scrambling his way through it all, stammering in the dark, all of his careful deep hope planning lost up in nerves, and he would lose his train of thought completely, because Marinette would reach forward and bury her face into his chest and wrap her arms around him before he even knew what had happened.

And he'd spend as much time there as he could, that night, answering questions and sharing stories— _remember that time Nathaniel had a crush on you and I totally showed up on your doorstep and we sort of took down a super villain together? Remember that?_ He'd be mortified and embarrassed as she’d laugh in his face. ( _What was with all the showing off? You didn't need to do all that flexing and preening—you're already cool enough as it is!_ And then she’d laugh in his face some more.) They'd look back at every akuma, every run-in—every touch, every shared word, every grin, every breath of flirting, and then—

Then what?

He can hear the questions: _Why... why did you flirt with me as Chat, then leave me alone? Why did you flirt with me... then declare your love for Ladybug?_

Adrien doesn't think she'll like the answers; he doesn't like them much himself. He does love Ladybug. Perhaps now more than ever. But maybe, just maybe, _it’s possible that—?_

//  
  


Even through the harder revelations, one thing is very likely: if Marinette found out that Adrien Agreste is actually Chat Noir, she'd be pleased.

 _Don't get ahead of yourself, cat.  
__You don't know that._  

The doubt creeps back in, and with it, reality.

_You would tell Marinette before you told Ladybug?_

//  
  


 _You can’t tell either_ , he knows. _That's the point_.  
  


//

It’s already past eight o’clock, but the four of them decide to meet up anyway.

Adrien doesn’t really feel like talking to Nino right now. He hasn’t had any time to really think about what actually happened between them earlier that afternoon, and he hasn’t bothered to text him; Nino doesn’t have any idea that the last five or so of his hours have been preoccupied with fighting a particularly awful akuma and endless worrying over his various identities, or hopeless fantasies of telling Marinette Dupain-Cheng that he’s actually the black cat that comes to bother her in the middle of the night… Nino probably just thinks that he’s still mad at him, and doesn’t want to talk to him.

Which is also true.

“What a day, right?” Alya sighs, unloading a hefty-looking notebook from her bookbag onto Marinette’s floor. Adrien is half-distracted because he’s still thinking about the fact that when he’d arrived in Marinette’s room, Nino had already beat him; he’s three-quarters distracted by the possibility that, just maybe, Nino had been here even before they’d agreed to meet up tonight. _Has he been here the whole time?_ Adrien wonders, unable to catch the stream of words pouring out of Alya’s mouth. _Why would he lie about having gone back home after the akuma attack?_

He can’t think of a single good reason.

Marinette is oddly silent throughout Nino’s tale about Chat Noir’s visit from the night before. _How could I have been so stupid?_ Adrien wonders, as he watches the indignation flare from mild annoyance to protective fury under Alya’s expression. _How could I have thought that Nino wouldn’t tell us about what happened?_ Had he actually wanted Nino to tell them, maybe? _Not like this_ …

Nino, ever-candid, does not temper his tone.

“I’d thought he was a pretty cool dude,” Nino says in a tired voice, “but he’s kind of an asshole, too."

Okay, Adrien gets it. He really does. But Nino only understands like thirty percent of the situation. Of course he feels guilty, but should he really be feeling _this_ guilty? Nino sounds like he’s been wrung out dry, but it’s not like Nino’s been completely innocent of doing some careless things, either.

 _They don’t understand_ , Adrien keeps thinking, and his chest keeps seizing up mid-conversation. The air feels tight, like it’s choking him. _None of them actually understand_.

Marinette is too quiet.

//  
  


The group decides that, in the end, although the trick Chat Noir pulled _was_ too risky for their tastes, the consequences were not inevitably awful. Nino did eventually end up with the sound recordings, after all.

“I already explained to Marinette what I think,” says Nino in a tired voice. “I think Ladybug is in more danger than Chat, at this point.”

Adrien demands, “Why?” and it’s the first thing he’s said to Nino directly all night. He tries not to let it show on his face. 

Nino only sighs, and if he’s voice is snapping, Adrien doesn’t notice it so much, because what he says is, “Because her protective powers are already lessened since she was forced to lose her mask in the elevator.” 

The room fills thick. 

Adrien might actually be choking, except that he can’t make a sound.

Alya stares in awe. “So you _did_ see her,” she whispers, at long, long last.

Did—did Nino really just say that? Adrien _knows_ Nino trusts them, knows Ladybug trusts _him,_ but—?

_Is he losing it?_

A jolt of short-fused panic slithers down Adrien’s spine. What if Nino loses it _too_ much? What if _he_ puts Ladybug’s secret in danger? What if this is all for nothing, and the one who ends up blowing Ladybug’s chance for safety is—

“Nino,” whispers Marinette, who has gently laid a hand over his from across the table. Adrien stares at it, unblinking. “It’s okay.” 

And then in the first openly affectionate move Adrien has seen either Alya or Nino do, Alya lays her head gently on Nino’s shoulder, and wrap her arms around his waist. Adrien doesn’t know how to feel about it. Nino sits in painfully thoughtful silence, staring at the floor.

Adrien is still staring at where Marinette’s and Nino’s hands meet, when he feels her eyes boring into him. He lifts his gaze.

She’s waiting for him to join them, he realizes. Inviting, but also pushing. Somehow, he knows that she’s surprised that he hasn’t moved forward already.

 _Has he not told you yet?_ Adrien wonders, looking into Marinette’s eyes. _About our fight?_ Her brows furrow slightly, trying to read the questions he cannot ask, but lest she actually see the answer, Adrien turns away, and sends Nino a genuine nod. It’s pretty useless compared to everything else he could have done on any other day, but today, this is as good as he’s got to give.

Nino knows this. He returns the nod, and soaks up the support from the rest of the room.

Adrien and Nino will finish their conversation soon. Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow night, but right now is not the time. 

They’ll fix things eventually; they just need to fix this first.

//

  
Chat Noir always goes to Ladybug first.

Tonight, he goes to Marinette.

He is not prepared.

//  
  


“ _You!_ ” Marinette’s voice is a thunderstorm, and her eyes are hell-fire. His arms are braced in front of him—like that will _do_ anything—but there is nothing he needs to physically shield himself from—yet—nothing but the promise of rage and wrath of Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

It’s a fearsome thing to behold.

“What were you _thinking!_ You have to be _careful_!”

“What?” he defends, backing away as Marinette paces him all over the room. “You guys were researching! Ladybug told me!”

“ _Alya_ was _interviewing_ , as a journalist—in broad daylight! She was researching, in _private_ , in the secrecy of her home! Nino was working— _secretly_ —with Ladybug! What do you think it’s gonna do to Nino if someone happened to see one-half of the superhero duo sneaking into civilian apartment in the middle of the night!”

“Well, that’s why I don’t get _caught_ , okay?”

“But you could been!”

“So what are you saying?” he demands, and it might just be the day, or might have been a long time coming, but he is fed up. “Should I stop going out at night altogether, then? Should I stop visiting _your_ room?” he demands, and he’s bearing down on her, but she’s not losing any ground, and he wonders if there’s a point in trying to make her look him in the eye even when she clearly has no intention of turning away. “Is me getting caught in your room really any better than getting caught sneaking into the hat-kid’s? You’re both in just as danger, either way! Why are you so quick to shield Nino’s involvement but not your own?”

She stares at him.

The whole room goes quiet with it, and it’s this moment that Chat Noir realizes how very close they have become. They’re close enough to let each other in on some of their secrets. He could tell her anything now, couldn’t he? They’re close enough to reach out and hug each other—she’s done that before, hasn’t she? They’re close enough that he can see the gradient of blue in her eyes, even in the dark.

Marinette isn’t saying anything.

Oh. Oh, shit. That was a lot. Is he angry? He feel like… he just got angry. Like he let himself be angry with Marinette for… the first time.

Is she angry?

“Sorry,” he says, not sure exactly what he’s sorry for, but feeling it deeply, anyway. Had he been yelling? God, he hopes not. “I just…”

“No,” Marinette says, very softly. “You’re right.”

Chat Noir looks down at her, but after a moment, her gaze drops to the floor. Chat’s not really sure which part she means, but he’s suddenly not liking the sound of it.

“You’re right… I _am_ more worried about Nino getting caught up in everything than I am for ma... myself. Maybe you see that as hypocritical, or unfair, and maybe you’re right. Who am I to decide whether or not he chooses to help when he has the chance? Right? I’m not any older or wiser than he is. Or you,” she adds, and there’s a tilt to her self-deprecating smile that screams _Nino_ so hard it hurts. “I’m just barely making it through the challenges of junior high school.”

Chat Noir’s tongue is heavy, caught over the words. “For the record,” he tries to lighten, “You are much, much wiser than me.”

She cracks a glare that has his own mouth trying to smile, but she’s thinking too hard, and Chat doesn’t like the light in her eye. “You have a really good point, Chat… I don’t want you to stop visiting, but… it’s pretty stupidly dangerous, isn’t it?” She looks up at him, eyes all ashine.

Chat’s stomach bottoms out.

“I mean, I was mad enough on Nino’s behalf just now… but my family and I could be in very real danger if Hawkmoth connected you and I together, wouldn’t we be? And all that _work_ we do, to keep them safe…” Chat’s heart sinks lower and lower into his chest. He wants to tell her to _stop_ , but then Marinette shakes her head. “Chat. I think you’re right… I think… maybe. Maybe I should ask you to leave.”

His heart drops.

He reaches for his voice, hopes it’s as light as he wants it to be, when the rest of him feels so heavy. “What happened to ‘we are both not any wiser than each other’? About not making decisions for other people?” 

“I’m not making a decision for you,” Marinette answers, brows furrowed. “I’m not.”

It annoys him that she’s so quiet and, and, and _tame_ about this. Or maybe he’s annoyed that his whole body is itching to fight—and maybe it’s the suit—but she’s not rearing up and ready to argue with him the way he _needs_ her to be, if he’s going to be _able_ to put up a good fight.  

“Oh, really?” 

“I’m just asking if we’ve really thought this through,” she persists. “I’ve done a lot of really dumb things over the last few weeks... You made a really good point just now, and I’m afraid that if we don’t both consider it, we’ll put people in unnecessary danger. Nino knows what he’s getting _himself_ into now, when he works with Ladybug's civilian self on the sly… but my parents don’t, when I’m working with you in your mask. Am I willing to put my parents’ safety at risk?” she asks. “Are you?”

Marinette stares, and it pierces right through him. 

Chat Noir’s mouth opens. “Marinette…” Grasps for straws. “You see how careful I am, right? Marinette, I would never put your family in danger.” 

“You would never choose to,” Marinette says to a space just beyond his shoulder. “But things happen. I don’t want you to be in a place where the choice could be taken from you.”

He has the weirdest sense of deja vu.

“I don’t want you to stop coming,” Marinette whispers. “But I think that’s what you should do.”

“Marinette… Marinette, look, I—”

“Why did you lie to me?”

Chat Noir blinks so hard at the abrupt change of tone that he nearly knocks himself over. “What?”

“You lied to me,” she whispers, and there’s so much hurt and confusion on her face that he actually does stumble back. “You snuck off to Nino’s apartment, and then you came to my room last night. You looked me in the eye and accused me of neglecting you as an option for the research, and not once did you tell me what you’d done. You kept that from me, even though you knew Nino is my friend. Why did you do that?”

“I… I was afraid of what you’d say.”

He’s never quite seen Marinette’s expression like this before.

“Is that how you make all your decisions?” she wonders, quite genuinely. His stomach hurts. “Based on what other people will think?”

 _I don’t care about what other people think,_ he wants to say. _I care about what you think_.

“Marinette, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Before he knows what’s happening, she’s slipped her arms around his waist, cheek placed to chest. He’s barely had a chance to return the embrace before she’s slipped out of his reach again.

“I know,” she says, eyes shining, voice firm. “But I am.”

//  
  


He’d promised himself he would never make her disappointed in him again.

He’d promised.

//  
  


At quarter to eleven, Nino gets a phone call and a story from Marinette.

 _“Just trying to stay positive_ ,” comes a teary laugh through the speaker, and Nino’s heart sinks to hear it. “ _Better safe than sorry, right?_ ”

Nino tries to make her laugh, but it only works a little, and he doesn’t really have enough time; suddenly it’s ten to eleven, and Ladybug has to answer another call.

“Thanks, Nino,” she says into the phone, and Nino says, “ _No problem_ ,” but the truth is—

He doesn’t feel like he’s really done much of anything.

//  
  


Chat Noir has already cried once tonight by the time he meets Ladybug at the Eiffel Tower. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything.

She looks pretty worse for wear, too.

“I went behind your back and had the hat-kid record my voice, even after you asked me not to,” he tells her, without preamble. She stills, but it’s not the startle-start of someone who is hearing a shocking piece of news; she simply listens.

He’d almost forgotten what that’d felt like.

He’s so surprised by her calmness that he loses his train of thought. After too many beats of silence, Ladybug allows herself to share, “I know. Nino told me.”

He _knew_ she’d already known; it still sucks to hear it. _What other disappointing things about myself did Nino tell you?_

“I’m sorry I put your friend in danger,” he says, because he means it. “I felt like you weren’t listening to me… I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, too.”

Is this… “Is this real?”

“What?”

“Are you… are you apologizing to me?”

Ladybug’s smile is too close to a frown. “I’ve… been pretty much trying to for weeks, now. For quite a few things.” Her gaze drops, and his stomach rolls. “Guess my apologies could use some work.”

Chat Noir swallows. “You’re not the only one.”

Before he can blink, her arms are around him. It feels so foreign and so much like home that Chat’s eyes begin to sting, so he just clings tighter.

“I thought you wanted distance,” he says, very quietly, because he’s not sure he wants to say it aloud. He doesn’t want to remind her.

“I thought… I thought I needed time to forget about some things,” she answers, into his shoulder. His hand moves over her back, as if—just to make sure. If she’s really there. “Turns out even a lot of time and distance and stupid decision-making doesn’t always turn out emotions the way you expected they would.”

“Why?” he asks, “I mean—why would you even try?”

For a moment he thinks she’s not going to answer him.

“Because I was scared,” she says, so quietly he feels it more in his bones than he hears the sounds. “I thought it was hard when I thought your flirting meant nothing; then I learned that it meant something, and I was scared about what would happen if I started to mean it too.”

Chat’s fingers flex over the material of the suit. Red and black.

“Do… What does it mean?” he asks. “Do you mean it?”

What is he even asking? Why does he ask shit he probably doesn’t even want the answers to? He needs someone to knock some sense into him.

Oh.

 _You just left Marinette’s room_ , says a voice, dangerously close to Plagg’s. It’s not judgmental, per se, but it’s not showing any mercy either. _What does that mean_?

Eventually, he hears.  “I think I’ve meant it for a long time now.”

Chat Noir swallows a razor down his throat. “What… what does that mean for us?”

“It means that I don’t want you to have to worry about me slipping away from you again,” she tells him, and he believes her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“So… are we—?”

“We need to defeat Hawkmoth,” Ladybug whispers, tight and fierce and unlike anything he’s ever heard before. “We can’t have him hanging over us.”

Chat wraps his arms around her so thoroughly that it’s a wonder they haven’t fallen over; he suspects the only reason they haven’t is because she’s holding him back, just as tight.

“Okay?” she breathes.

“Okay,” he answers. “We will.”

//

“Soon.”

//

Marinette is really dragging her feet to come downstairs this morning. 

Nino’s spinning an apple over her kitchen countertop, staring down at his sleeping phone. Adrien hasn’t texted him once since yesterday afternoon.

He knows he’d fucked up; he’d even said, out loud, to Marinette, that he hadn’t been _certain_ that Adrien would want him to share his feelings with Ladybug’s civilian-self… but it had just seemed like the right thing to do? At the time?

But that’s exactly what Chat Noir had said about hounding Nino.

What would Marinette do, when she found out that Nino and Adrien were having a fight? Things were finally just starting to warm up between Adrien and Marinette… would Nino’s impulsivity and loud mouth from however many weeks ago be cause for tension between them all _now_? Would things become awkward between the four of them?

Could Nino even tell Alya that he’d spilled Adrien’s feelings to Ladybug’s civilian-self? That it had already affected not only Ladybug’s feelings towards Adrien, but also that it’d affected her magical friendship with her superhero partner, too? That now it had worked its way back to the beginning, full circle, because now Adrien had zero percent trust in him? Would Adrien ever trust him again? Would Adrien even want to hang out with them anymore? He lowers his head into his hands.

Nino is tired.

//  
  


Marinette’s eyes are blown wide with shock. 

“You’re… you and Adrien had... a fight?”

Nino shrugs. Pretends his shoulders don’t weigh about a thousand tons. She’s barely had time to say good morning to him, hasn't even asked about how her evening with Chat Noir went—the second round, anyway—and he’s already throwing this at her. Wow. Some friend.

“Actually… we’re fight- _ing_.”

“What?” Marinette’s hand flies over her heart. “Why?”

 _Because I told him,_ Nino shuffles his feet, kicks a pebble. Totally Normal™. _Because I told him that I told you about him._

“Just haven’t been a very good friend to him lately,” Nino sighs. Marinette startles.

“Because of me?”

“What?” Nino’s head whips up. “No!”

Her face falls. “It’s because you’ve been helping me.”

“Marinette, come _on_ ,” he groans, and then he grabs her wrist to pull even further back around the school grounds. He really does not want this being interrupted, not right now.

Tikki takes this as her cue to assume that the coast is clear, and Nino notices when she tentatively pokes her head out of Marinette’s purse. He’s distracted for a moment as Tikki moves herself to resting just inside the lapel of Marinette’s jacket, watching with patient interest as they sort themselves out, and then Nino carries on.

“It’s not _just_ because I’ve been busy—and I’ve been busy with a lot, for the record—it’s just. I don’t know. He and I… haven’t been agreeing a thousand percent on… courses of action to take… recently.”

“That is so unbelievably cryptic, I’m going to punch you in the nose.”

“No, you won’t.”

“No, I won’t. Just tell me, please.”

Nino shuffles some more. “I just… I don’t want this to make things awkward, you know? You and Adrien… you just started getting along better, right? Why I had to go and make things tense and stupid and awkward, I don’t know, I just…”

“Nino, you can _tell_ me. It’s okay.”

He considers it.

“Hey, Marinette… what do you think of Adrien, these days?”

Tikki twists her head to glance up at her Chosen one, watching her expression in earnest. Nino tries to hold eye contact with Marinette as much as he can; she’s not making it easy.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Nino chose his words very, very carefully. “Do you think he still has feelings for Ladybug?”

Marinette stumbles back, and Tikki holds gently to the fabric to keep steady. “Where did this come from?” she stalls.

“Humor me?” he shrugs. “I’m curious. Do you believe him?”

“Of course I believe him!” Marinette answers, so quickly it almost comes out as an accidental hiss. He knows they’re outside and hidden around the corner and there isn’t an echo here like there was in the stairwell, clearly, but it still makes him nervous that Marinettes style of so-called _whispering_ still includes an awful extra lot of decibels sometimes.

Nino sighs. Or maybe scoffs, who knows? “So then why not just be with him?”

Marinette is _aghast_. “As _Ladybug_?”

“Yeah.”

“Because! Because it’s not safe! I literally just asked Chat Noir to—to stop visiting, for the very same reasons! Tikki, tell him!”

When Tikki only hums thoughtfully, Marinette glances down at her jacket lapel as if betrayed.

“Is that the only reason?” Nino prompts.

“No!” Marinette hisses again, and now her cheeks are red. “Because I'm also not convinced his feelings for Ladybug are going to amount to anything!”

Ah.

“So… in that case, why did you shut off your feelings for him?” he asks, carefully and consciously and controlled.

“I didn’t just _shut_ them off like a lightswitch—it took time!”

“You don’t think,” Nino starts, calculatingly, carefully, “you don’t think he’s started to focus on something else?” Shit, his heart is actually starting to speed up a little bit from this. But Nino’s gotta fix what he messed up in the first place, he just _has_ to. “Or like… someone else?”

Marinette stares at him.

“Whether he's focused on Ladybug getting with _him_ or getting with Chat Noir, he's still clearly thinking about her—and has been, for a while.”

“Marinette…” he says, very slowly. “That’s not who I meant.”

It dawns on her.

“Wh… what?”

Nino says nothing more.

“No, that’s—you’re just excited, and you’re seeing things that aren’t there,” Marinette declares, though her brows are doing the funny thing that means she’s thinking too hard, the thing that usually has Tikki patting her on the shoulder. “I know you and Alya are still, like, holding out hope, or whatever, but. I just. We just—we’re just able to actually have, like, real conversations now.”

Nino shrugs; careful, artful, and calculatingly casual.

“What?” Marinette demands. “ _No._ No! The whole reason I was even able to become friends with him was because I learned he didn’t like me—that he liked the _other_ me too much—I just—what? No. In the handful of times Ladybug ran into Adrien, she and he have had more meaningful conversations than he and Marinette have had in all of a year of class together! And then some! Ladybug saw him in the shower!”

Holy shit. " _What_?”

“Oh dear,” Tikki blinks, but offers no further explanation.

“Why would Adrien notice _me_ through all that, even—even if we’re talking _now_ —when I couldn’t even muster up the courage to have a normal conversation with him for a whole _year?_ I was—I couldn’t even be his _friend_ , let alone someone he could become interested in! And then, finally, I _could_ become his friend! Because I realized that he’s in love with Ladybug—and then I learned a whole lot about why he was so careful with Marinette, and it was only after I _stopped_ being so careful and pulled myself together and _stopped_ liking him that I was able to start treating Adrien like a real friend, and and and—it’s not about him liking Ladybug for real or not! It’s about us being able to be friends! It’s about me choosing to _not_ like Adrien!”

Marinette inhales deep, shallow, quick, long breaths. Nino waits.

"Except... you didn't really stop liking him. Did you?"

Eventually, Marinette's only answer is to shuffle backward until her shoulders hit the wall, and to slide slowly down to the grass. Tikki sighs, long and consoling and with all the understanding that an eons-old creature of ancient magic can.

After a moment or two, Nino joins her.

//  
  


"Were you always this perceptive?"

Nino ponders. "Maybe? I don't know. Maybe I could have been. Maybe I just didn't notice as much, because everyone around me always seemed better at it. Maybe I just didn't see it because I didn't have as big of a chance before."

"Being Ladybug's confidant, you mean?"

"I mean," says Nino, "being your friend."

Marinette ponders.

Tikki has moved onto Marinette’s thigh, but at some point in the last few minutes she’d started to slip off the stretchy fabric of Marinette’s pants; she now rests in the small valley that exists where Nino and Marinette’s thighs are pressed up together.

Nino wishes he could sleep that peacefully.

"You know what I think about all the time?" Marinette suddenly asks.

Nino blinks. "That could be... a lot of things."

Her hand smacks his shoulder. Ow.

"I was Chosen as Ladybug," she says. "And then I chose to accept it. I didn't choose you," she says. "But it happened. And you chose to be here anyway. Sometimes I like to think about the reasons why."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—sure, you liked the idea of being on the ‘inside’ of the operations, like, seeing the underbelly of the fight, yeah, and you also knew later on that your recording equipment could be of assistance... but those aren’t the reasons why you stick around."

"No?"

"No. You stayed because you knew you could be a good friend." Marinette glances at him. "And since then, I've been trying to act more like you."

Nino suddenly has the stupidest urge to cry.

//  
  


“I’m going to tell Chat Noir who I am.”

Nino raises his temple from where it is resting against Marinette’s. They still have like ten minutes before they meet the others. He stares down at her.

“What?”

“It’s probably stupid,” she’s breathless. “Especially considering what is happening all around us right now. And I’m—I’m terrified, but. I need to tell him.”

“ _Need_ to?” Nino echoes. “Or want to?”

“Both.”

“Is that safe?”

“I think,” comes the comforting voice from their laps, and wow, how long has Tikki been awake for? “That whatever Marinette feels is the right decision, is going to be okay. Nothing is ever certain, but we can trust your judgment, Marinette.”

Her only answer is a bit of a wobbly smile. God, they’re all so tired, aren’t they?

“Marinette,” Tikki looks up at her, “You worried in the beginning that you weren’t good enough to be Ladybug… that Ladybug was always preferred to Marinette. But you’ve had quite a few important revelations, since then.” Almost conspiratorially, she looks to Nino. “It was a big moment, you know, when Marinette accepted that she was Ladybug even without the suit.” Tikki’s grin widens, reaching both of them. “It was an even bigger realization, when you really realized that you’re still Marinette while inside it.”

Marinette’s lips quirk, and to Nino it does truly shocking things to the weight on his shoulders; for how long has his outlook on the day been affected by how easily Marinette smiles?

“Do you think Chat Noir has figured out the same thing yet?” Marinette wonders seriously. “That he’s really the same person, no matter whether his powers are activated or not?”

Tikki gently rests her head back into the valley between them, and nestles in. “Hmm,” she murmurs sleepily. “We can hope so. Time will tell, but if not, I'm sure he will also find his way, in time. The Bad Luck kwami has his own way of doing things.”

Tikki drifts off, and Marinette takes this newfound pearl of wisdom in with a long, deep, thoughtful sigh. She readjusts her position against the wall, settling deeper into her thoughts.

Their shoulders are pressed against each other’s fully now, which is a feeling that he never expected to be so genuinely familiar with, but something he can no longer really imagine his days without.

“I don’t know who his feelings are stronger for right now,” Marinette sighs. “But maybe those don’t even matter. He cares about both... he's been hurt by both. I can't say he'll be happy or relieved to find out that either of us are the same, but maybe it's not about that either. Maybe it’s more about just being open and honest with my partner, and trusting him with my own protection as much as I want him to trust me with his.”

Nino can’t believe he’s saying this, but, “What about Adrien?”

“I know you and Alya are still holding out hope, but… I just have a hard time imagining it, Nino. When you said what you said, I realized that there might have been one or two moments when I felt like… well. I don’t know. I’m not really sure how to be his friend just yet, and I guess what I thought was a residual crush was really still just… a crush. Of course I was looking for signs. But… even if he doesn’t return Marinette’s feelings, and if he still only feels for Ladybug… well. I guess that still hasn’t really stopped me even after all this time, has it?”

Nino slowly shakes his head.

Marinette sighs, long and deep, and it sounds strangely content. Nino wishes he could report the same.

“I’m gonna tell Chat,” she says, firm and determined and anxious and peaceful all at once. “Tonight. I’m gonna show him.”

An unexpected emotion clenches in Nino’s chest. It’s not an unfamiliar one, but it’s an awful one, and he never ever expected that he’d be feeling it this strongly over Marinette... over protecting her precious secret. Over Ladybug.

Jealousy, however small or baseless, burns brightly in his chest.

He can’t help it. He just can’t.

 _So is this the end  
_ _of the Battle Buddy arrangement, then?_

“You know that revealing yourself could put you in even more danger,” he reminds her, half-fear, half-insistence, half-whatever the heck this hot burning coal is in his throat, he hates it, he doesn’t _want_ to be this kind of friend. “You know that. Right?”

 _You don’t have to do this.  
__Don’t do this._  

Marinette’s face falls, only slightly, but Nino reads all the emotions framed inside. He knows them well now.

“I can barely keep the lies straight anymore,” she says. “I’m tired, Nino.”

Unfortunately, Nino understands exactly what she means.

//  
  


Adrien and Nino nod to each other when they enter the classroom, and take their seats.

Unless Adrien’s imagining it, Nino looks even more exhausted and downbeat today than usual. Is their fight really wearing on him that much? 

It’s impossible for Adrien to have forgotten about it—Nino is his best friend in the whole world—but, with everything else going on in the last day or so, it’s just—

 _Right now is not the right time_ , Adrien decides, sneaking glances at Nino’s worn-out profile over the course of three class blocks. _I’ll talk to him after school_.

//  
  


During his trip to the water fountain, Adrien doesn’t get much of an actual break.

Alya corners him.

“So what’s the deal with you and Marinette?” Alya suddenly interrogates Adrien, and _oh_ , right, yes, he had _indeed_ been wondering if there were any possible way to make this day more awkward than it already was. Here it is.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he pulls a face. As if he hadn’t been wondering the same exact question all night, and all morning.

“You’re acting super weird,” Alya accuses, crossing her arms. “And you know it. You’ve barely looked back in our directions at all today. If you’re overthinking again, just say it.”

“Whoah!” Adrien startles, a cautionary hand goes flying out like a barrier between them, like _that_ might hold her off. “What? Where’d that come from?”

“Adrien.”

“Is this about what I asked you to do in the library?” he tries not to snap, he _really_ does. “Look, I really appreciate you helping me get the chance to talk to her, okay? It was really helpful, and I was able to start talking to her. A bit.” He finishes, with a pregnant pause. Alya stares at him balefully, clearly expecting more. Feeling a surge of annoyance rise up, Adrien blatantly finishes with, “That’s it.”

“Cut the crap, Agreste. You have feelings for her.”

Adrien’s stomach drops to his toes, and slams back up again. His mind blares _How do you know?_ And _Why would you say that?_ and what comes out is, “Well, _she_ doesn't have feelings for me anymore, okay?”

Shit.

“How do you know?”

Adrien stares at her, uncomprehendingly. Wasn’t that supposed to be _his_ question?

“She said so,” he answers. And then, more flatly, because Alya is not answering him. “She told me so.”

Alya looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“What!” The annoyance flares up, higher than his ears. He can feel it taking up brain space. “That's what she said!”

“Adrien,” Alya sighs. “I know you are smarter than this. Come _on._ ”

Suddenly, Adrien gets angry.

“What are you talking about?” he deadpans, if only so no other expression leaks out. ( _Actor. Model. Actor. Actor. Actor. Act—_ )  “And that’s not fair, by the way—you know this is only my first year of high school. It’s not like I’m an expert on any of this stuff!”

“Have you _told_ her?” Alya presses. “Have you asked her?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“I’m sorry,” and oh, oh oh, he is _not. “_ But is this your business? Just because you’re a journalist doesn’t mean you have rights to everybody’s thoughts all the time.”

Alya takes a menacing, meaningful step forward; unwittingly, Adrien takes a step back. “You think I’m doing this because I’m a journalist, Agreste?” She stares him _down_ , even as she proceeds to look up. “If that’s the case, then maybe you’re not quite as perceptive as I thought you were.”

His eyes narrow. “I try not to make assumptions about people,” he says, with an edge. “Or who they’re interested in, or seeing.”

Alya catches the double-meaning he throws at her. She sighs, long and heavy, and Adrien immediately feels bad about bringing her relationship with Nino into the mix; that’s not worth arguing about, not anymore. It probably never was worth being upset over to begin with, but that’s just really hard to remember right now what with everything else that’s going on.

“Alya… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“You guys need to talk,” she interrupts, holding a hand up between them to halt his words. “I don’t know what y’all said to each other yesterday, but I know it wasn’t good, and it sure as hell was bad timing. I’m talking to you because so far _you_ won’t talk to anyone, when both Nino and Marinette could really hear from you.”

 _I’m pretty sure they’re fine just with each other_ , Adrien can’t help but think, and then freaks out for a moment, because dear god, what if he’d said that out loud? He glances to Alya’s face, but she’s still holding it in that same scolding, stern, knowing expression. Suddenly, he has to ask.

“Do you worry?” he blurts, but can’t find the right words. His hand flexes in the air, useless.

“Worry about what?”

“About—how good their friendship is becoming?” Adrien wonders aloud. “Don’t you worry that we… might get left behind?”

Against all expectations, Alya’s whole face softens… the line of tension in her shoulders melts completely, which only makes Adrien more tense.

“Oh, Adrien… is _that_ what you’ve been worrying about?”

“What—?”

Alya is reaching up, and there’s a hand on his shoulder, and—is this okay? Is this allowed? Can she do this sort of thing if she has a boyfriend and Adrien has never had a girl put a hand comfortingly on his shoulder before is this okay?

“Honey… just because you have friends, and those friends become closer friends, doesn’t mean that you have to become further away.”

Adrien’s throat closes up.

“I… I don’t know what means.”

Alya just looks at him. She sees right through him, and it’s the semi-most terrifying thing he’s ever experienced. His eyes sting.

“Just talk to them,” Alya says, and then steps away. He thinks he should be able to breathe again—he does—but’s like she left a weight in his chest, even if she’d just lifted a huge burden from his shoulders. _How long had I been carrying it?_

“I don’t know what to say to them,” he admits, even though it’s really scary to.

Alya just winks.

“Trust me. No one ever really knows.”

//  
  


And then it’s almost embarrassing, how long it takes— 

For Adrien to realize just how long it’s been, since he and Nino actually bumped fists.

//  
  


Adrien heads in the direction of the Boys’ Locker Room.

With any luck, Nino will be dragging his feet for gym.

//  
  


Halfway there, around the corner to a stretch of empty classrooms, Marinette corners him.

“Can I ask you a friend-advice question?” 

“Uh,” Adrien says, already nervous. “Sure. What is it?”

“Okay, so this is gonna sound really stupid and trivial considering everything else that’s going on right now, but it’s really important to me, and I feel like you’re the best person to understand what I’m going through.”

Did he just hear her right? His mouth runs dry. “Not Nino?”

She blinks in surprise. “Not... with this, no.”

Now he’s _really_ nervous. “What is it?”

“Okay, I need some advice—well, first, I wanna ask you a question, if that’s okay?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Anything. What?”

“What’s it like to have feelings for a really distant and unavailable per—superhero?”

Adrien feels the color drain from his face, then rapidly flood it again. “Wh… what?”

“I just—I’m sorry if this is super awkward, but I really am… curious.”

“Marinette… what is this about?” 

“I don’t want you to think that I’m still hung up on you or anything—don’t worry, I’m not, it’s not like that, I swear—or that I’m still sad that you’re in love with Ladybug—”

“Marinette… listen, there’s something I should—” 

“But the truth is that I’ve also… sort of developed feelings for someone else now.”

 Adrien blushes. He knows, immediately and with absolute certainty—that she’s talking about Chat Noir. 

Adrien looks at her. He really, really looks at her.

Marinette blushes.

He thinks, _How long are you planning to push me away?_

Chat. How long is she planning to push away _Chat_ _Noir—_

And suddenly it occurs to him, how wrong it feels to be on this end of the conversation. It feels so strange, to be in a school hallway, listening to her talk about how she likes him but doesn’t like _him_. It feels strange to be asked for advice about liking him, to be spoken to about like this, while he’s out of the suit. He feels incredibly exposed. He wants Marinette to slide her hands under his shirt.

What. 

“I’m going to talk to him,” Marinette nods, swift and determined. “There are some… really important things I have to tell him. I was just wondering if… if you had any advice. For what I should do when he rejects me?”

Adrien starts. “When—wait, what?” The words aren’t wrapping around his brain properly, and he feels like he’s going cross-eyed trying to watch how they fit into something that clearly does not make sense. “What makes you think he’ll reject you?”

Marinette stares at him, uncertain. “Well… won’t he?”

Adrien doesn’t know what to say. He has not a single clue of what to say. None. And then Alya’s voice comes rushing back to him. _No one ever does._

“I think you should tell him how you feel,” he says, very softly, almost too hard to hear. God, _breathe,_ Agreste. “When you like someone, I think you should tell them.”

Marinette lists her head to the side, soft and serious, and so, so thoughtful. “Have you told someone you liked them?”

“Not yet,” he says, head spinning. “But I will. I want to.” 

When did Marinette get so close? His head is spinning. The air around them feels thick and static-y, full of jolts and too much energy. This is terrible timing. Marinette is literally mid-confessing of her feelings for his _other_ self to his civilian self, and between the thinly-veiled lines he’s pretty sure he just confessed to _her_ , and he’s pretty sure she understands what he’s not trying to say even though he _just_ told her to tell _him_ (the other him) that she likes him, and…  

He just really wants Marinette to let him kiss her.

“You want to?” she asks.

Adrien blinks. “What?”

Marinette’s eyes flicker back and forth between his. He really, really cannot breathe. 

“Want to what?” he blurts, because, oh god, what were they talking about again? A frantic memory of their filmed near-kiss flashes through his mind in a bolt of panic. _There’s no way—she’s not thinking what I’m—she’s not._

_She’s not._

Marinette doesn’t seem to have an answer. She’s waiting for something. 

She is.

Adrien thinks he actually moves a fraction closer. Or maybe she did that? Who is moving? Is the world moving? Marinette is moving closer. The world is moving.

But he feels Marinette’s gasp against his jaw as she turns her cheek, and Adrien stops short, dead cold, because they’d gotten so close but then changed course at the last second so that _now_ their cheeks are actually touching, god, the heat of her so close to his skin is almost painful, his cheeks must actually already be on _fire_ , his head is spinning so hard he’s going to be sick because Marinette is still looking past him, and her skin is soft and they’re not moving away but he has no idea what they’re doing. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He can hardly breathe.  

“Oh,” whispers Marinette, and then he feels a small hand grasping at the front of his shirt, clinging to stripes without recognition, and the shock of the sensation sinks into Adrien’s chest, drips down to his insides and melts there. “Oh.” 

The sound jolts something like bravery into Adrien’s heart, and he gently pulls back to look at her face.

As he draws slowly away, out of the corner of his eye, he spots something he thought he’d never see again. 

Adrien’s hands find Marinette’s small, delicate shoulders. Her fingers tighten their hold at his chest.

He would recognize those bubbles anywhere.

//

 


End file.
